The Return of the Native

Of all the elements of this story, I feel the love triangle between Eustacia, Wildeve, and Clym is of secondary interest to the environment in which it takes place, which is the weird and lugubrious heathlands.

Perhaps I am unfamiliar with heaths; as far as I know, we don’t have any in the U.S. Hardy describes the British heathlands like the landscape of another planet. Largely flat with shallow hills and vales, it sometimes bursts with floral color, and depending on the weather, it can be beset with raking orange sunlight or gloomy palls of mist.

The locals are fond… show more.

I hesitate to choose Hardy, not just because he is well known enough not to need my endorsement, but because he comes close to misanthropy, practices a fatalistic belief in destiny, and punishes his characters often needlessly, to satiate his enormous anger at the unfairness of the world. All this turned me off him. But on coming to live in the country I finally clicked with aspects of his vision, and was inspired by his sensuous and near-religious immersion in nature to endow my own book with a natural vividity and realism, that I hope grounds the more fanciful and… show more.

I read this novel in high school and it left an impression on my young mind, both as a reader and a writer. The main character, Eustacia Vye, longs for true love in her isolated world out on the blustery Egdon Heath. She has her eye on Clym Yeobright, who is set to return from Paris. But this wonderful gothic romance has other things in store for her, because Clym’s dreams are far different than her own. I recall lounging on my parent’s lazy boy in the den, reading about the Guy Fawkes festival, feeling the cold winds on the… show more.