Book Review: The Mayor of Casterbridge

Lately my reading preference has been towards classics (I not too long ago had a craving for easy-to-read comfort novels). My most recent discovery was a book called The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (a thrift store buy) and reading the summary on the back I had to see what it was about. The first line of the summary is "In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair." Hmm, sounds like a wonderful character. The first chapter describes the incident of the scandal, which puts the main character Michael Henchard in a bad light to say the least. But this seems to change in the following few chapters when his wife finds him again after 20 years when the man who purchased her (he is actually a gentleman, he did not buy her simply to take advantage of her) had died. Henchard is full of regret and had not consumed any alcohol since that day as a way to repent. He appears to be a changed man and sympathy for him is not hard to find. As other events take place, though, some of his character flaws start to show up again. The author somehow makes his character seem to deserve pity and love one moment and pure hatred and annoyance another. By the end of the book I was ready for him to leave the story; he just kept ruining everything with his unyielding selfishness! But then he honestly regrets his actions, so it sometimes seems like he has a double personality and it is hard to hate him entirely for that reason. The book basically narrates the life of a truly messed up man and the marks he leaves on other people. I would not say that it is exactly the most interesting read, at least not up to par with say Frankenstein or Crime and Punishment, but it was certainly intriguing and I am glad I have experienced the story. Go Penguin Classics!