The Mayor of Casterbridge
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4.3 • 150 Ratings
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Publisher Description
It is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge (based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset). The book is one of Hardy's Wessex novels, all set in a fictional rustic England. A poor, disgruntled, drunken young man sells his wife and child to the highest bidder. When he awakens, sober, the next day he regrets his rash act and vows to give up drink and find his family and bring them home. Eventually he is forced to give up the search and move on with his life. He does this quite successfully until, nearly 20 years later, his past comes back to haunt him.
Customer Reviews
A soap opera
A man who blames others for his problems, does something bad when drunk, stops drinking and becomes a success, finds happiness, loses everything, becomes bitter and then becomes resigned.
A daughter who is happy but finds out she is not who she thinks she is, twice, but finds happiness anyway.
A man who is talented and annoyingly good at everything, becomes a great success, usurping the first man on the way. Twists and turns all the way.
An enjoyable romp
Amazing
I studied The Mayor of Casterbridge for A Level English Literature….I really didn’t get it at the time, it felt too wordy and because of a profound difficulty with concentration, I hated it! I don’t think I actually even read the whole book. Since then, I had a very fixed and negative view about Thomas Hardy.
A friend suggested recently that I read his other novels first (Tess of the D’Urbervilles; Far from the Madding Crowd; Return of the Native), which I did, and then to give this novel another chance.
I’m very glad that I took her advice. Reading this again, 46 years later, it feels like a completely different book. I absolutely loved it. The writing is sublime, the use of language poetic; the plot and the main characters really compelling. Hardy also seems to be asking a big question about how much our personal characteristics, good or bad, affect our destinies.
Thoroughly recommend this to everyone and I am really looking forward to reading his other novels starting with ‘Jude the Obscure’
The mayor of caster bridge
Thoroughly enjoyed it. Have always meant to read this after far from the madding crowd and was not disappointed.