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eleventeen 's review for:
Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
3.75? My first Hardy, and he's wonderful with descriptive writing (which is a weirdly lost art in modern writing and im so confused? why?) He's able to present the threshing of grain and the shearing of sheep and all these pastoral ventures in such a way that your heart surges with some ancestral desire to work the land with your hands.
Or maybe that's just me.
Anyways, character-wise, this feels like a collection of archetypes - the stolid, steady Gabriel Oak (I mean his character is implied in his name), the shattered Boldwood, the fickle Bathsheba, the duplicitous Troy. I'm not sure, as I don't have a whole lot of classics under my belt, but I have enough that the themes of separating men and women with distinct gender traits is a bit roll-your-eyes, though forgiven for the time period, but it does render the characters a little more crudely drawn than they could be.
Unlike Tolstoy or Hugo, there are not grand lessons of life here. There are subtle things, hinted at, truths he almost touches on, but they're ultimately hidden behind Hardy's need to deliver a plot that he hopes contains these grand truths but...doesn't...quite. Like he's almost there...
I've heard Hardy is super depressing, but this one doesn't really fall into that category, or i may just be a weirdo that thrives on reading depressing shit and this didnt seem that bad to me. There are moments where you're like asjhgajhrjahrkajhajr and a few moments of !!!!! DAMN IT!!!! but nothing where i had to set down the book, my heart aching. That's the new scale. on a scale of 1 to set down the book and walked away while weeping inconsolably, this was a "held hand to heart and went Oh! a few times" so yeah, sad it is not. Still, it was engaging as hell and a very quick read for 420 pages.
Or maybe that's just me.
Anyways, character-wise, this feels like a collection of archetypes - the stolid, steady Gabriel Oak (I mean his character is implied in his name), the shattered Boldwood, the fickle Bathsheba, the duplicitous Troy. I'm not sure, as I don't have a whole lot of classics under my belt, but I have enough that the themes of separating men and women with distinct gender traits is a bit roll-your-eyes, though forgiven for the time period, but it does render the characters a little more crudely drawn than they could be.
Unlike Tolstoy or Hugo, there are not grand lessons of life here. There are subtle things, hinted at, truths he almost touches on, but they're ultimately hidden behind Hardy's need to deliver a plot that he hopes contains these grand truths but...doesn't...quite. Like he's almost there...
I've heard Hardy is super depressing, but this one doesn't really fall into that category, or i may just be a weirdo that thrives on reading depressing shit and this didnt seem that bad to me. There are moments where you're like asjhgajhrjahrkajhajr and a few moments of !!!!! DAMN IT!!!! but nothing where i had to set down the book, my heart aching. That's the new scale. on a scale of 1 to set down the book and walked away while weeping inconsolably, this was a "held hand to heart and went Oh! a few times" so yeah, sad it is not. Still, it was engaging as hell and a very quick read for 420 pages.