Lejos del mundanal ruido (1874)

I've only read three of his books now, but I kind of love Thomas Hardy. Because he gets it. He gets how shitty social and moral conventions are to women. Does Hardy have an avid following like Austen or Dickens? Because he totally should! I demand more Hardy adaptations!

Bathsheba Everdene - what an awesome name - is a beautiful, intelligent, confident, and fiercely independent young woman. Upon inheriting her uncle's farm, she moves to Weatherbury, where she attracts the attention of three very different men: loyal shepherd Gabriel Oak, reserved farmer William Boldwood, and dashing soldier Francis Troy.

There are so many vividly drawn scenes - for instance, Bathsheba falls for Troy after he gives her a display of his swordsmanship. (How perfectly Freudian!) And Bathsheba is just such a wonderful character, female or otherwise. She makes her own decisions, some of which are mistakes, but she is strong enough to own to those mistakes and grow from them.

Hardy is truly one of the masters of his craft. Despite his books' gloomy reputations, he has a sense of humor that shines through. And I'm not a fan of descriptive prose, but his is gorgeous without being self-indulgent. I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about raising sheep and what can go wrong. (I admittedly did tune out whenever architecture or farming practices came up, but those passages don't last long.) I highly recommend this book if you're a fan of the marriage plot and/or soapy Masterpiece Theater productions. ( )

Fiction

I read the paperback edition of the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of this first of Thomas Hardy's great novels. Published in 1874 and set in the fictional Wessex counties of southwestern England in the 1860s, is the excellent story of simple farmers, a dashing soldier, a beautiful, rural heiress, love, obsession, betrayal and murder. ( )

Turns out it's actually about ethics in gaming journalism. (Sorry) Seldom boring - Hardy takes advantage of the serial approach to springboard each chapter from a variety of angles that include a naturalist passage from the perspective of cemetery gargoyles and range from digressions on the sheep-shearing process to rural farce. The freedom of tone also proves distracting and crippling for the drama: Boldwood is a confounding character, at times seemingly conceived as a parody of Byronic heroes but also an object of sincere pity for both Oak and Bathsheba. Hard to sympathize when most of his conversations appear to have been ported in from a more overtly comic work. Of course, the obvious counterpoint is that Hardy's skill for climaxes is in evidence here, pulling these disparate tones together into something pretty lurid that gives the impression that the entire work coheres better than it does. But, I can imagine myself impatiently awaiting the next installment of this month-to-month in 1874, and that's not nothing. ( )

One of the most quotable books I’ve read and so clever. This took me a long time to read as there were some slower parts, and there was a lot of sheep description which I don’t know how to feel about. Overall, loved it! ( )