Audio Book: The Mayor Of Casterbridge
Written by Thomas Hardy (The Audio Partners)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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It amazes me sometimes how glaring the neglect of English author Thomas Hardy's work is. In the literary Hollywood, if D.H. Lawrence and Jane Austen are A-list celebrities then Hardy is a solid B. He moves down the red carpet and garners some interest from the paparazzi, but ultimately there is more above the line interest in others.

The glossing over of Hardy's writing is a tragic oversight. The immortal author, who brought a unique vitality to the Wessex countryside, stands 75 years after his death as one of the truly great authors of his time. Novels such as The Return of the Native, a tale of free-spirited feminism, and the strong intellectually ambitious protagonist Jude Fawley in Jude the Obscure are as stimulating and entertaining as any of their contemporaries.

Hardy's masterpiece is perhaps The Mayor of Casterbridge, a novel written when the author was forty-six and at the summit of his dramatic powers. The tale is a simple one, exploring Michael Henchard's long drawn attempts to atone for the sale of his wife at a village bazaar. In typical Hardy fashion, his characters are beset with a string of wrenching tragedies which threaten - sometimes successfully accomplishing - the ultimate destruction of the protagonist.

The real accomplishment in The Mayor of Casterbridge is its structure, holding tight obedience to William Shakespeare's King Lear and all of the famed strain placed on the characters in that play. Lear is the modern archetype of the Job myth and oft copied. Where no one has really been successful in duplicating its effect, Hardy utilizes its points with deft strokes. Whether it is for the aesthetic wonderland Hardy creates in the Wessex landscape or the depths of human endurance he draws on for drama, the author's work - perhaps starting with The Mayor of Casterbridge - is long overdue for re-discovery.

[Pick this up at www.audiopartners.com.]

© 2003 - Erick Mertz