THE BIG SALE IS ON! TELL ME MORE
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and wrote both poetry and novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928.
I was a teenager when I read this book. There was something about Hardy's harsh, fatalistic world that appealed to me then. Despite, or maybe because of, the pessimism, I think I found it rather romantic and I read everything of his that I could lay my hands on. Then I got to Jude. And Jude was just so sad, so unfair, so much about fate shafting a good man in all kinds of ways, that I overdosed on Hardy and could never read him again. But I still remember sitting on my bed and crying my heart out at the injustice of it all. I cried so much my mother came upstairs to check I was all right. I think she was worried about a teenage excess of emotion. Maybe that was what I liked about Hardy all along: you can shamelessly feel as you read him. REVIEWED BY WILLIAM WAKE (Kirkus UK)
