Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

"Tess" really deserves it's place as a classic - Hardy writes of her as if she was real to him.
Her whole story is all the sadder for being so believable, the description of everyday life, living conditions, attitudes, etc.
He defies the morality of the time with his empathy with her - whereas today we would nearly all agree with him, back then he was heavily criticised for his sympathetic portrayal.
I found it hard to come to terms with how much I enjoyed this book - despite the fact that it was the first of his I had read, and I wasn't expecting the ending - it was a bit like losing someone that I knew....

I have to give Tess five stars because no book I have read before or since has moved me to such a degree. Thirty years later I still have my original copy, entirely disintegrated, the glue dissolved, in part I'm sure by my hot adolescent tears. It simply tore me apart - I remember in particular strugggling to finish Tess's letter from Flintcomb-Ash through eyes fogged with grief and that after finishing the book I was well-nigh inconsolable for days. I spent the following summer touring the Dorset locations on my bicycle as a kind of pilgrimage, and remember those cruel hills pretty well too.

But having said that, I was sixteen at the time and emotionally wide open. Reading it five years later, I could hardly get past the clumsiness and infelicities in the writing and the crude manipulation and melodrama of the plot. How could I have fallen for this? Reading it again another ten years further on I better understood the theatricality of it - it should be read in some ways like the old ballads with which Hardy was very familiar, with their highly exaggerated representations of good and evil - but the magic had gone.

Maybe the key is that Tess is a book written by an emotional adolescent - Hardy was a writer who arguably never really grew up, and his own relationships seem to bear this out - which speaks most forcefully to other adolescents. The melodrama and the suffering, the torment and the injustice which Tess is put through really are meat and drink to the average sensitive sixteen year old, but seem perhaps a bit foolish in retrospect.

But this isn't really a criticism. 'Tess' is by far the greatest of Hardy's novels and the high point of his career as a novelist (Jude the Obscure would tip over into self parody) and is written with a rare passion - Hardy said that he loved Tess and, although he perhaps had a funny way of showing it, his depth of feeling for his creation really comes through. Like 'The Catcher in the Rye', if you're in the right demographic - a sixteen year old or someone who still feels like one - you're going to love it. If not, you may wonder what all the fuss is about and should perhaps move straight on to Dickens.

Slow starter - seemed simplistic story at start. However soon got to the point where I could not put the kindle down and wanted to know next turn of Tess`s story. Love the language of the time and being taken back to a more innocent time. Would never guessed have the ending!