You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by upnorth
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
4.0
This is one of those books that takes you straight into another time and place. Hardy is such a vivid writer, you can feel and touch and smell and see across the places he describes.
It is crushingly sad, but the truth of the situation is psychologically real and mature, born out of extreme frustration and despair at the social reality of the time, the limitations of class and poverty. He was angry, and his passion saturates the book. The dysfunctionality of the characters is all too familiar and believable, the self-deception, the misplaced loyalties, the character flaws they can't get past, the real experience of poverty and failure. How many people have you known who didn't or couldn't live up to their youthful dreams, never made use of their most obvious talents because of a lack of education, money, connections, resourcefulness, early parenthood?
It is crushingly sad, but the truth of the situation is psychologically real and mature, born out of extreme frustration and despair at the social reality of the time, the limitations of class and poverty. He was angry, and his passion saturates the book. The dysfunctionality of the characters is all too familiar and believable, the self-deception, the misplaced loyalties, the character flaws they can't get past, the real experience of poverty and failure. How many people have you known who didn't or couldn't live up to their youthful dreams, never made use of their most obvious talents because of a lack of education, money, connections, resourcefulness, early parenthood?