Far from the Madding Crowd

I first read this classic story in my teens and was instantly besotted by Hardy’s farming world and the characters he filled it with. It is still the one I would take with me to my desert island if I was only allowed a single book to keep me company.

And what company I’d be in. Bathsheba Everdene is the ultimate in strong female protagonists and she was carving her path as a farmer in a man’s world long before she inspired me to write about my own feisty heroine, Jude Gray. 

As a student I fell in love with… show more.

Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba Everdene is like that friend who is sure she has all the answers but really has no idea how much she has yet to learn about life, love, and friendship.

When Bathsheba inherits her uncle’s farm she understands, and relishes, that she is now completely the master of her own destiny, a fate not common for unmarried young women of her time. Her determination is admirable, but she is as well a uniquely frustrating character.

Independent and intelligent, she is also dangerously headstrong and proud, and her inability to look to others for guidance makes her prone… show more.

Comfort books for me are those you can dive into when you need to take time out from the world. I could have chosen almost any of Thomas Hardy’s books for this purpose but I love Far From the Madding Crowd with its strong, determined, but flawed, protagonist, Bathsheba Everdene. The men who court her are also finely drawn characters, each ridden by their own devils, but the one who wins her is the one who definitely deserves to triumph. Hardy uses the Wessex landscape to provide an idyllic backdrop to his dark story of love and betrayal with its… show more.