The tragic tale of Bathsheba Everdeen and her three suitors. An interesting plot and characters. Great to listen to as an audio book. ( )

This book really didn’t do much for me. I adored the lovely, flowing style of writing Hardy had, the writing it self was almost poetic as the told his story, but the story it self just fell short for me. I didn’t care much for any of the characters, they bored me and I wasn’t ever interested in them at all. Most didn’t have anything catching or striking about them, just a group of people, going on with there day to day lives. The story is about the men who fall in love with a farmer woman, but even the love story it self wasn’t as I thought; it almost lacked emotion and feelings you’d expect. I also found a lot of the story to be predictable and redundant. There are only so many times you can see the same guy beg for a woman’s love and for her to turn him down. It gets boring very quickly, and you want the story to move on and progress faster than it did. Although I guess the slowness of the story can reflect the slowness of the time period, life on the farm and the close-nit community people of the time lived in. And Hardy does an excellent job at that, he is able to portray that, it just had a week cast of characters, that didn’t do much for the story, and in fact probably hindered it.

There isn’t much else I can say, I’m not turned of Hardy yet, I’m going to try and read some of his other work, because his writing style is just beautiful, but this story just wasn’t me. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1264840...

I wasn't hugely grabbed by Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but I quite liked this, Hardy's first Wessex novel: a decent enough romantic plot, with some very good descriptive passages relating to the countryside. It seemed a much quicker and more enjoyable read than Tess, possibly because Hardy is not trying to be too Deep and Meaningful. ( )

A very good book, with numerous twists and excellent writing. ( )

Beautiful production, boring story. ( )