About this title: Hardy's novel begins with the famous scene in which Michael Henchard, a young farmer, gets drunk at a village fair and sells his wife and baby daughter to a passing sailor for five guineas. The consequences of this impulsive act are regrettable and far-reaching, and culminate in Henchard's ruin and his death in obscurity as a lonely old man. ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780140431254ISBN:014043125X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean pages, no marks or tears, binding shows a little wear on bottom and very little on top. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 448 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780140051032ISBN:0140051031
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. slight yellowing of pages from age. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade.438 pages read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Airmont Publishing Co.
Date Published: 1965
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by previous owner. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, aging. 256 p. read more
"I read this book while discovering Hardy (and many particularity of its language). From my french background, it was both surprising and also gave me familiarity with a place I do not know much: rural england. The morale of life remains untethered, in spite of the tension between the two mayors (one among many subtle ambiguities in this book) being almost Manichean. What is good, what is bad, and how life chooses, and how we choose our life. Dropped in a period that faded away (even as Hardy was writing), becoming quickly intemporal, this story reminds of Atridian tragedy, bigger than life character.
"Alright, so after I read this novel I finally realised what people in the pre-television era used in place of soap operas. I just couldn't handle the overly over melodrama of this story. The author seems very fond of creating a bang upon another bang. Don't get me wrong I like drama in general but too much of anything is bad for you, or at least that is what I believe.
The idea of the antagonistic Fate imposing its dire revenge on those who transgress both the limits of society and family, is a little far fetched. I do believe that people in who do wrong in this world are made to suffer for their deeds sometimes in this world. But to say a retribution in this life could take a toll of this magnanimous scale seemed to me a little too surreal.
Nevertheless, the tragic aspect was a appealing in the end, although all te damage that Hardy had caused to his own story remained unmendable, resulting in the overshadowing of the beauty of the ending by the horridness of the drama in the rest of the novel."
"HATE! HATE! If the author doesn't even care what happens to his characters, how are we supposed to? The plot is obscenely contrived and moralistic. The verbiage is absurdly disinterested; at one point, I believe a character fleeing for her life is actually described as "earnestly" climbing a haystack as she tries to escape a mad bull. EARNESTLY? In high school, we had to read this and write an essay arguing whether the book was a tragedy or a comedy. I wrote that the tragedy was that in the fact that the book had ever been written. I still stand by that."
"I read this in high school and again in college, and have to admit that I wouldn't have rated it so highly if I hadn't had the benefit of studying it as part of a course. I don't think I would have appreciated the subtleties of the story and characters without someone telling me what to look for. I also read this at a time when the other books I was reading all ended either on a cryptic or a tragic note, so it impressed me that someone could tell a story with an outcome that felt good."
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