I thought this was a lovely well written romance. There were points where I thought the book had lost me, as the main characters were so silly and mindless that I thought a satisfying conclusion would be impossible, that whatever happened I just wouldn’t care very much. I’m glad I stuck through to the end though because Hardy ties it all together very neatly.

The pastoral setting is treated as a kind of blank slate of humanity where the people and their dreams are timeless ans unchanging. There was a wonderful description of the architecture and work done in the village not having changed for centuries. They just exist as people there to reveal some kind of basic human truth without the complications of modern life. I’m not sold that the conditions were made entirely evenly and Bathsheba as a representative of the female sex (being such a woman) was very fair but I’m sure some bored academic has done a feminist reading on this already. Regardless the setting worked well.

I often see people say you shouldn’t read slop because it has no use to see what’s bad but after having listened to Game of Thrones the intensity of the writing in this book comparatively dwarfs anything GRRM has ever written. I think it made me appreciate it even more.

And on the topic of slop I was reminded of an argument I had with a friend about the movie Phantom Thread. I thought the movie was dreadful on account of the characters being so unlikeable and irredeemable that any love produced by the couple is going to be cheap and worthless. Well I feel like this book is that sort of romance with flawed and silly characters resolving a real and pure love.

Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame at a place some way back. ... And at last I didn't know what to do. I saw when it was too late that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his..... And I was grieved and troubled..・・ " She cleared her voice, and waited a moment as if to gather breath. "And then, between jealousy and distrac-tion, I married him!" she whispered, with desperate impetuosity.

After reading this was the point I almost gave up on the book because it was so cartoonishly retarded and annoying. As said before the book gave a very elegant and life affirming conclusion. Somehow Hardy manages to build up a romance, stamp on it and then rebuild it even bigger. I really hate a lot of contemporary fiction that resigns itself to flaws and half measures as if full love is locked away from uninteresting people.