Thomas Hardy: Under the Greenwood Tree

[pandop]

Well I took your advice and gave Hardy another chance - and I am sorry to say I wasn't overly impressed with this one either.

AS with FFTMC I spent most of the book wanting to slap the female lead. Not to mention being exasperated with the dithering of the male lead. There was even less made of the incidental characters in this one, to the point that I don't know why some of them were there (did anyone else feel sorry for Leaf?)

I will try again though

Hazel

[amner]

Looks like old Thomas just isn't the man for you, Hazel. Top marks for giving him another pop though.

[pandop]

People keep singing the praises of Jude the Obscure though, so I might try that sometime ... not right now though.

Hazel

[amner]

Well I liked it ... but it's terribly bleak. The pastoral idyll takes a bashing, big style (you know you're in for it when the hero gets a pig's genitals chucked at him by the woman he later marries).

Consider that fair warning :wink:

[pandop]

This sounds better, it is the idyll that was getting to me!

Hazel

[youjustmightlikeit]

I haven't taken a look at UTGT yet, but if you're talking about wanting to give a Hardy heroine a slap you should take a gander at Tess. Now there was a woman who needed to get a grip. But if you're planning a go at Jude - be warned, it's misery from start to finish, although i can't really say that because i couldn't finish it. Hard going, not worth it.

If you like your Hardy lighter (bearing in mind this is all relative) then The Mayor of Casterbridge is a good bet, with a bit of wife selling and a man with more ups and downs than Roger Moore's eyebrow. The coincidences that collide to drive the plot along are, quite frankly, ludicrous; but for some reason i'm quite fond of it.

[pandop]

Well I can't say I was that impressed by the ITV version on Mayor of Casterbridge - but that shouldn't put me off the book, as I did buy the cheapy version of The Forsyte Saga when I bought UTGT.

Won't be making much progress for a while though, as I have just bought The Chronicles of Narnia on DVD - and am deciding whether to have a reread of the books before I rewatch the series, or after.

Hazel

[Colyngbourne]

I was surprised at what a quick and idyllic read this was. Almost top marks, I think, and all the better for reading it in the pre-Christmas season.

It's an unusually simple tale told with humour (I was laughing out loud through the whole book) and with a deceptive gentleness - I was expecting things to go disastrously Hard-ily wrong and of course there were intimations of that in the heroine, as Hazel points out. Fancy Joy is not the sort the reader would ever trust but then Hardy is more forgiving and generous to her than we would be, with her pride and deception and flighty interest in other men's regard. I can cope with 'feel-good' when it is this well done, and if the story between the two characters is not entirely gripping or filled out, that is because the seasonal observances and the underlying tremors of social change are the tense bedrock of the story (forgive the unworkable mixed metaphor there). The dignified ceding of the gallery musicians to the modern, the pin-point depiction of the new vicar and the ways and means of supplanting the choir with the barrel-organ, are not held up as the apocalyptic signs some might even today take them for, but each position is allowed. Hardy is obviously more sympathetic to the tradesmen and craftsmen of the village but he does so from the inside-out, I think, and he extends the same understanding to Fancy, when we probably would not.

Having not read Hardy since my university days, it's probably time to take a wander around his darker pastures in 2006.

[Colyngbourne]

And behold - ITV are doing Under the Greenwood Tree on Boxing Day evening, with Keely Hawes (that should guarantee amner watching) as Fancy Day.

[amner]

Yup, saw that. Seat booked in front of the telly, etc.