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A review by olliejb
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Tim Dolin
4.0
As somone who started their Thomas Hardy experience with "Jude the Obscure", this book came as a shock to me. All the way through the book we are presented with situations that seem impossible to recover from - yet again and again Tess breaks our expectations and soldiers on. Until the end...
Hardy has left me feeling broken again, as only he can - if you thought that his poems and other books were attacks on love, religion, and mortality - well, you haven't read this. A bleak and desolate book, that at times drones on with a somewhat predictable and repetitive nature; patience is rewarded at the end, when your expectations are subverted (even if you expect Hardy's typically depressing ends, this is a whole new level).
Personally, the tone of this books wasn't as good as "Jude the Obscure", as that book starts fairly simple, and rises throughout, whereas this one peaks and troughs repeatedly, leaving you slightly exhausted - the tone seems to be frenzied one moment, calm the next, which does take away from its readability and emergion.
Overall though, still a classic Hardy, and not one that you will forget in a long time.
Hardy has left me feeling broken again, as only he can - if you thought that his poems and other books were attacks on love, religion, and mortality - well, you haven't read this. A bleak and desolate book, that at times drones on with a somewhat predictable and repetitive nature; patience is rewarded at the end, when your expectations are subverted (even if you expect Hardy's typically depressing ends, this is a whole new level).
Personally, the tone of this books wasn't as good as "Jude the Obscure", as that book starts fairly simple, and rises throughout, whereas this one peaks and troughs repeatedly, leaving you slightly exhausted - the tone seems to be frenzied one moment, calm the next, which does take away from its readability and emergion.
Overall though, still a classic Hardy, and not one that you will forget in a long time.