A classic I have put off reading for a long time. One of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, set in the 1830s to 1840s in Wessex, his fictionalised concept of South West England named after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Casterbridge is based on Dorchester in Dorset where Hardy grew up.

The story begins with Michael Henchard who after a few too many drinks at a fair sells his wife to a stranger, a passing sailor, for five guineas. His wife leaves with the sailor, taking his daughter Elizabeth-Jane with her, leaving Henchard to his remorse and regret when he sobers up the next day. Henchard makes an oath of sobriety and manages to become a prosperous landowner and the Mayor of Casterbridge. Years later, after the sailor dies, his wife Susan and daughter return, creating a second chance for all. He takes on a manager, the charming, clever Scotsman Donald Farfrae. The happiness is short lived though, and with more twists and turns than a soap opera, Henchard sinks himself from his dizzy heights to an even lower low, by virtue of his blustering, pig-headed and impetuous nature.

Initially Henchard had my sympathy and the story was engrossing. By the end I was completely fed up with his petty jealousies and self-sabotaging behaviour and just wanted it to end. Like most men of his era, Hardy does not write convincing female characters. Susan was a feeble and gullible character and Elizabeth-Jane, although upright and moral, was fairly flat and passive. Hardy’s characters certainly have to pay for their mistakes, and he doesn’t do HEA. His line at the end sums up Hardy’s cheery approach to life in a nutshell: “Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” Luckily the audio narration by Tony Britt was enjoyable. ( )

I devoured Hardy as a teenager, but approached this book with some foreboding. I feared I would find it slow-going. It wasn't. I loved from the first Hardy's evocation of the Dorset countryside, its rural and urban landscape. Hardy specialises in telling us about lives which do not go well, and the story of the brooding, moody self-made Michael Henshaw, Mayor of Casterbridge is no exception. Although I was more convinced by his male characters than the female, I was drawn into the lives of the principal protagonists. It was obvious things would not end in a good way, but I was involved in the narrative, and in the detailed picture of a way of life already on its way out, a rural throw-back. This is a powerful and sympathetic study of a deeply flawed character, and the milieu in which he spent his life. ( )

A more modern Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in that the flaws of Henchard's character doom him to misery. Each of the characters are well rounded with both positive and negative qualities, ( )

Ho no no nothing serious man he cried with fierce gaiety these things always happen don't they? (215) the relentless descent of Henchard to his doom is both fascinating and increasingly painful as one cannot help but empathise absolutely with this Lear- like character. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time.