The Return of the Native

"Audible has this and it's narrated by Alan Rickman!🖤🖤🖤 You are welcome in advance. "

"My rating hovers somewhere between a 4-5. I was truly astonished by the way I ended up enjoying this book, after the first fifty pages were such a slog. Hardy’s style is more scintillating than the Victorian novels of his era, but still very much Victorian in description. (Yet perhaps I wouldn’t know, as most Victorian literature has not survived the test of time.) <br/><br/>I found myself, at times, lost amongst the Heath — descriptions of brambles and hillocks, acclivities, switch, whirlpools, and all are quite outside my experience as one locked in the natural-denying suburbia. The mix of naturalism and romanticism, yet the overall gossiping nature of Grecian tragedy eventually won me over — yet I have to wonder if Hardy’s true interests lie in the nature of a character going astray, and he uses natural description to cover up the baseless with impressionistic brush strokes. Once I became acquainted with Egdon Heath, I found myself amongst the humbler villagers, rather awestruck at the absurdity of elitist tragedy.<br/><br/>Though Eustacia Vye appears to be the villainess of this novel, and the creator of her own struggle — if she had been allowed to travel and employ herself as a man, I suppose the story wouldn’t have happened. And if Thomason had not feared for her reputation above all, she would’ve been able to be happy and well-matched from the beginning. And this is why we have done away with such things, but why we do not have such tragic tale-worthy stories. Yet you must be on the Heath when reading to understand such things.<br/><br/>In the end, I am happy for the reddleman, Diggory Venn - but to find out that Hardy didn’t want a happy ending, makes me wonder why. What is the point of reading a book if it is not the way the author intended? <br/><br/>I am sure to think of it every so often, until I forget."