The Mayor of Casterbridge

De: Thomas Hardy

Narrado por: Pamela Garelick

From its spectacular opening, the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a country fair, to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction."

(P)2001 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in Great Britain in 1886.

Take a chance on this - you'll like it!

Henchard, Henchard, Henchard - poor Henchard. Is he the villain or a victim of circumstances? Should you feel empathy for him, or does he deserve everything that happens to him? That's the beauty of this book, I think. I read the synopsis and assumed that the book would build up to the sale of the wife, and so when that happened much earlier than I expected, I wondered what else could be left. Boy - was I wrong. This book had so many twists and turns - every time I thought it was going in one direction, it veered off again. Several times I found myself saying, "No, he didn't!" or "No, she didn't!" My feelings about the characters changed time and time again - sometimes I liked them, and sometimes I didn't, or thought they were stupid - there wasn't one "winner" throughout the entire book - but that worked really well!

***I'm spilling some of the beans here, so don't read on if you plan to read the book.*** I was ambivalent about Elizabeth and Donald ending up together. I wanted something nice to happen to Elizabeth, but after the way Donald "dumped" her for Lucetta, I wasn't sure that I wanted him to be the something nice. But I guess Hardy thought he had to write it that way to throw yet another curve ball at Henchard.

I think you should give this a try - it's an interesting foray into the ups and downs of human nature. I definitely liked it and am interested in picking up some more of Hardy's fiction.

This was my first audiobook with Pamela Garelick as the narrator, and I thought she did a great job.

Fabulous

This is my first Hardy novel but it is not going to be the last. When I fist saw Jude the Obscure as a film, I was so taken with it that I could not get it out of my mind for months. It is only upon listening to The Mayor of Casterbridge that I have come to understand that in making Jude, the director Michael Winterbottom) had raw material of an unparalleled literary quality. I love English a written and spoken by 19th C writers. This book does not disappoint in any respect. As someone who has listened to audiobooks for some time now, I found the quality of reading to be excellent. Throughout this long book, there were no moments during which I wished it to be over. The work is slow but its drama effects one directly. I find it hard to listen to a work of this sort without becoming personally invested. I am going to be upset about the book ending because I have taken sides. That's life.

Another astonishing novel beautifully read

How inventive Hardy is, creating unforgettable characters, bold men and equally bold women. This book begins with a drunken misogynist selling his wife to a sailor, and the tragic and pleasant consequences. It is a plot invention worthy of Kafka. The reader is perfect

Casterbridge keeps you wanting to read more

Very well narrated. The woman narrating soes a very good job of bringing out the emotions for male and female characters

complex

this was such a lovely story. It was nothing that I expected. The characters were complex and the storyline was very rich.