Hardy 'companion' sheds valuable light

THOMAS HARDY<br>The World of His Novels<br><b>J.B. Bullen</b><br><i>Frances Lincoln</i>
THOMAS HARDY<br>The World of His Novels<br><b>J.B. Bullen</b><br><i>Frances Lincoln</i>
If you have read and enjoyed Thomas Hardy's Wessex stories, you will appreciate this brilliant little book and find yourself going back to the stories with even more enjoyment and understanding, not only of them, but also of their author.

Professor J.B. Bullen has taken each of the six Wessex stories and explored and enjoyed the particular areas of the verdant Wessex countryside or town from which each story has sprung. The endpapers show a helpful map of southwest England.

Hardy's Wessex locations are identified in a different script to that of the real villages, towns and countryside. Each chapter is illustrated with photographs, just where you need them to be, and with other illustrations relevant to his theme.

More importantly, he has shown how Hardy's concerns and preoccupations contributed significantly to the mood and structure of each story.

The impact of the environment on his characters and their relationships to each other, for example, is always somehow a determining factor, and Hardy felt deeply about the changes being wrought in the English countryside by the rise of industry.

These changes, Prof Bullen suggests, account in part for the pervasive and increasing darkness in the stories over time, as well as the difficulties Hardy was experiencing in his life and relationships.

The poems too, particularly those written after the death of his wife, are seen to be rooted in places where Hardy, grieving, recalled earlier, happier times.

I cannot wait to read the book again, while digging my Hardy novels from the bookshelf to accompany it.

- Margaret Bannister is a retired Dunedin psychotherapist and science teacher.

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