The Return of the Native

By Thomas Hardy

The Return of the Native combines all of the great themes of Thomas Hardy's works. Wonderful descriptions of the English countryside underscore a rural tale of doomed love, passion, and melancholy. The novel opens with the famous portrait of Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called 'the real stuff of tragedy' of the book. The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, innkeepers, sons, mothers, and lovers that populate the novel. The 'native' is Clym Yeobright, coming home from a successful, cosmopolitan life in Paris, a place far removed from the unforgiving landscape of Egdon Heath. He finds that his cousin, Thomasin, is about to marry Damon Wildeve, a rakish and confused man with a lover, Eustacia Vye, whom he cannot forget. Eustacia is willful, ambitious, and dangerously alluring. Hardy describes her as 'the raw material of a divinity. . . . She had Pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries.' As the characters are drawn together, they scheme and maneuver, often under the eye of Diggory Venn, the reddleman whose relentless virtue must find its reward at the violent climax of the novel.

The Return of the Native was first published in Belgravia magazine in twelve parts in 1878 and revised by Hardy in 1895 and in 1912, when he produced the definitive Wessex Edition of all of his novels. Described on publication by Harper's magazine as 'delightful reading,' it has retained its power to move and absorb the reader and stands with The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure among the finest of Hardy's works.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9780679641520

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.

Reviews for The Return of the Native

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Damn this man can write tragedy! In this novel Hardy createsa love triangle (quadrangle?) that is both beautiful and disastrous. Using his incrediblegift for lyrical prose he takes us into the wild land of Egdon Health.Diggory Venn, a local reddleman, is in love with ThomasinYeobright. She in turn is in love with Wildeve, a restless self-centered man.He is torn between his feelings for her and his love for Eustacia Vye. Add Thomasin’scousin Clym Yeobright, the man who catches Eustacia’s eye, to the mix and you’vegot quite the quandary. Each of the characters is wonderfully developed. We feelEustacia’s restlessness and Thomasin’s earnest devotion. We long for Venn tofind love and Clym to find happiness. We watch their lives unfold with a mix ofapprehension and excitement, wondering all the while if the characters arefalling in love purely for the escape they offer each other or if theirfeelings are true. Do they want something because someone else wants it orbecause it’s truly their heart’s desire?“The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animatenature – that of not desiring the undesired of other – was lively as a passionin the supsersublte epicurean heart of Eustacia.”I loved how the health is one of the main characters in thebook and all of the characters are shaped by their reaction to it. Eustaciadesperately wants to leave it and will do anything to get away. Clym returnsfrom Parisaching for the wild health he loved so much in his childhood. Thomasin feelsthat she is a country girl and is comfortable living in the health. Only Hardycould make the background setting of a drama such a definitive character in theaction. He even describes the effect the health has on the women who live there…“An environment which would have made a contented woman apoet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy womanthoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”SPOILERS All of the characters desperately want what they can’t have.Another person, money, success, peace, travel, etc. Even Clym’s mother Mrs.Yeobright longs for different partners for her son and niece. She wants theirhappiness, but when they’ve chosen their lot in life she has such a hard timeaccepting it that she perpetuates unhappiness in their lives. Each character isdestroyed by their own longing except for Venn. Early in the book he comes toterms with the fact that he’ll never have the woman he truly wants. He acceptsthat and decides that he’ll do everything he can to make her happy from adistance. Then, in the end he’s the only one who ends up getting what he wanted.It’s a beautiful picture of selfless love. SPOILERS OVERBOTTOM LINE: This book is so beautiful and poignant I justcan’t get over it. It’s definitely a new favorite of mine. I’d recommend it ifyou enjoy Victorian literature, tragic love stories or just gorgeous prose. “Love was to her theone cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days.” “Humanity appears upon the scene, hand-in-hand withtrouble.” “What a strange sort of love to be entirely free from thatquality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passionand sometimes its only one.”  

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the 6th book that Thomas Hardy wrote and published. For the reading group we have read all the previous ones and I feel like Hardy finally reached his full capacity in this book. It has all the hallmarks that those persons who have only read one or two of his better-known works would recognize.This book is set entirely in the fictitious (but based upon real moorland) Egdon Heath, a sparsely settled and remote area of Wessex. Many of the inhabitants farm or cut furze for a living. Some are of a more upperclass stratum such as the grandfather of Eustacia, Captain Vye, and the mother of Clym, Mrs. Yeobright. As such they have higher aspirations for their offspring than to marry someone from the Heath. Mrs. Yeobright's inclinations also extend to her niece, Thomasin. However, Thomasin (or Tamsin as she is sometimes called) has fallen in love with the innkeeper Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright at first protested at the banns but she has finally agreed the marriage can take place. So, on the morning of Guy Fawkes day, Thomasin and Wildeve set off to a nearby church to get married. Much to Thomasin's disappointment the wedding cannot take place because the licence was obtained in another township. She has fled from Wildeve and stumbled upon Diggory Venn, who was a former suitor. Diggory is a reddleman which is a person who sells reddle, a type of red ochre, to sheep farmers. He lives out of a small caravan and it and himself and everything he owns is stained red. They arrive home just as the bonfires from Guy Fawkes are dwindling. Thomasin and her aunt just want to escape back home but first the locals come to sing to the, as they thought, newlyweds.Meanwhile, Eustacia has set her own bonfire burning hoping to attract Wildeve who was her lover before he took up with Thomasin. Eustacia has the reputation as a witch and it does seem that she has bewitched Wildeve. He turns up at the bonfire and it is clear that he cares a great deal for Eustacia. The question then arises will he proceed with his plan to marry Thomasin or will he return to Eustacia?During the rest of the book, which takes place in exactly a year and a day, proposals, betrothals, weddings and even a birth take place but who with whom should probably be left to the next reader. As with most Thomas Hardy there is tragedy but there is also a righting of wrongs.Egdon Heath does sound wild and rugged but some of its inhabitants love it. Hardy is the master of describing places and I wish that I could transport myself back in time to experience this place. I think I would find beauty in the furze and other vegetation. I know that the birds and beasts would be wonderful.Hardy is also a master of characterization. The minor characters like Grandfer Cantle, Susan Nonsuch and Charley add to the story. Of the major characters my favourite is Diggory and that certainly is my favourite name. I suspect he might have been Hardy's favourite as well.

[audacity88_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The eloquence and grandeur of Hardy's writing cannot disguise the soap-opera nature of his story. Melodrama and coincidence figure largely, removing the interest from the actions of its intriguing characters.

[branful · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What　I cannot agree with this novel is most of the important actions in this novel are detemined by the unconfirmed presumptions (by Eustacia, Clym and Mrs Yeobright). No characters in the book or the unconfirmed presumptions (by Eustacia, Clym and Mrs Yeobright). No characters in the book or thE narrator try to rectify this error. This is unacceptable and deprives the basic sympathy narrator try to rectify this error. This is unacceptable and deprives the basic sympathy toward this book from me. On the other hand, I am charmed by the good prose and the right words. In this head, HardThemots just.y is much better than Austin or Forster. I should like to admit that I am rather sympathetic with Wildeve. Although he was not loyal to Eustacia through and through, his indecision was understandable and eventually, he proved to be faithful at heart to Eustacia. That is a comparative feat, and as much as possible for an average man.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Oh, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me!",, 29 November 2015This review is from: Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native (Paperback)Set on the great, bleak expanse of Egdon Heath, this is a gothic tale of love, despair and misunderstandings.Centred on the imperious Eustacia Vye, resentful at having to live in this god-forsaken place, we see her at first carrying on a clandestine romance with the affianced Damon Wildeve. And then into the picture comes the returned native, Clym Yeobright, cousin of Damon's fiancee. He has been carving out a successful career in Paris, and would seem an ideal match for the beautiful Eustacia who yearns to travel...Forming something of a 'Greek chorus' are the local people, with their amusing conversations, folk customs and superstitions. And the omnipresent 'reddleman', Diggory Venn; a seller of sheep dye, and former (unsuccessful) suitor to Thomasin Yeobright, he seems to be always prowling about the heath looking out for his loved one.At times a little over the top in emotion, this comes to an extremely good and touching ending.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It took 25 plus years, but after being totally put of Hardy at school, I finally tried again. And it was nothing like as bad as I thought it was going to be. This is the story of two couples who have married and both, for various reasons, are unsuited. The characters are supported by a mass of well drawn characters, pone of which is the landscape itself. The whole of the first chapter is devoted to describing Egdon Heath and it takes on a presence that is more than mere backdrop. There are contrasting opinions on it as well, with Eustacia wanting to get away and Clem feeling he has returned home. It certainly isn't a feel good book, it has an air of melancholy about it, there's a lot of repenting at leisure and the whole tone is nostalgic for a time and tradition that probably never existed. Even the ending seems not to focus on the hope of a marriage (this one seems much more sound) but on the disappointment and lack of emotion of Clem. It was certainly a lot better than my last experience with him, but he's not exactly a cheery bunny. His landscape is excellent, I'm just not sure I bought into his characters entirely, the marriages struck me as a little too far fetched. It may well be less than 25 years before I pick up another.

[elaineruss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully descriptive. A book to just curl up an lose yourself in.

[missizicks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel is a poem to the ancient beauty of the heath. Hardy's descriptions of the way the light falls across it at different hours, the colours that emerge from it, and its ancient invariability and unwillingness to be tamed are beautiful. The characters who live, work, idle and scheme on the heath are among the best, in my opinion, that Hardy created. Eustacia Vye is a wonderful creation, spirited, intelligent, manipulative and yearning for something to lift her from the doldrums in which she perceives herself to be languishing. Clym Yeobright is an idealistic, naïve young man who turns from his life of wealth to seek a sense of usefulness back among his native people. Damon Wildeve is a scurrilous rake in the mould of Pride & Prejudice's Wickham. There is an element of caricature about them, but Hardy is too skilled a writer to bring forth pure exaggerations of human characteristics. Alongside the main personality traits writ large, Hardy includes subtle contradictions, light and shade, that make them seem modern at the same time as being romantic constructs. Hardy is good at acknowledging the restrictions of female existence in his era while at the same time recognising that women are more than society will permit them to be. It is the women in his books that compel. Given that there isn't a single Thomas Hardy novel that is 100% cheerful, it would be too much to expect things to work out well for these three. But the tragedy that befalls them is tempered by a satisfactory joy for the two other, quieter, central characters, Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. The Return of the Native is a novel written by Thomas Hardy that has as its locale 19th century rural England. The story line of the novel revolves around the romantic attachments of several inhabitants of Egdon Heath, essentially a love pentagon (as opposed to the classic love triangle). There is Diggory Venn, the reddelman, who loves Thomasin. Wildeve, who marries Thomasin, but loves Eustacia, who marries Clym Yeobright, Thomasin’s cousin. You get the picture.The story is a little slow to get started, as Hardy never uses a dozen words when a hundred can be strung together. His prose is overly descriptive and verbose. Finally, we are introduced to all of the major characters and a period of enjoyment commences as the makings of a fine tale emerge. Alas, the story grinds to a halt as long periods of inaction and repetitious behavior develop. I’m sure the style is not unusual for the period, though I’ve read a lot of Dickens and found his writing to be far livelier.In listening to the audiobook, I would have sworn that the book had to contain 800 pages, but the Amazon profile reports only half that. Perhaps it only seemed like 800 pages, given the long periods of sleep inducing inaction and florid prose. In any event, it was not terrible, just not exactly to my liking.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good, but not amazing. I almost couldn't believe the number of misunderstandings and accidents in this novel, to the point that I found it nearly implausible. From the problems with a marriage license at the beginning to Clym losing eyesight due to reading too much by candlelight (I'd be blind by now if this was even remotely possible) to the whole sequence of unanswered knocks on doors and letters not received. I guess I'm just not a Thomas Hardy fan.

[lisa.johnson.james · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my second book by Hardy. Like the first one I read, this is a book about moral dilemmas & the power of misperceptions. Eustacia & Thomasin are tragic heroines who suffer the consequences of rumor & reputation is small town 1800's England. Clym, the one is is the returning native of the title, is a man who fortune treated well in the beginning, but struck down at the end. Wildeve is the romantic hero who is the cause of much of the 2 ladies' problems....It's sad most of the way, with a few clever places throughout, like Eustacia's attempt at disguising herself as a man in the mummer's play so that she could meet Clym to begin with. That evening's work she didn't quite think all the way through, & finds herself in a rather touchy situation :)All in all, I was ok with how the book ended, although the afterword gives us an idea of how the original ending went vice the one that the book gives....

[stuart10er_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Is Hardy for marriage or against marriage? Having read a few of his works, I think that perhaps he ultimately comes down on the side that marriage is a bad idea. This one, however, leaves you thinking that perhaps under the right conditions, if both parties come to the marriage from a place of grief and don't expect too much then maybe it can work. A young man returns to his village when his cousin's marriage is temporarily disrupted but all sorts of mayhem ensues. It is difficult to give any details of the plot without giving the whole thing away as not many events happen in the book, but it is full of character (both human and of nature) and mood. I really enjoyed it. Definately depressing - but not nearly as much so as Jude, which made me depressed for days.

[evilmoose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An amazing work of art, this would be great to do as a tutored read I think (or follow along with a tutored read at any rate). I'll need to re-read it as there's so much I've missed. The sort of book that reminds me how little depth there is to many of the books I read. Audiobook read by Alan Rickman was initially distracting, because Alan Rickman was reading a book to me, but then I was so drawn into the tale (relationship drama! wedding mishaps! old loves! passionate new love! bonfires! the heath! death! love triangle?) that I stopped noticing him. A couple of chapters from the end when people started hurling themselves into the water, I started giggling with the thought that maybe all of the main characters were going to hurl themselves in and drown, and the rest of the novel would just be pleasant descriptions of the heath.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although this book is set in rural England in the 1800s, the story covers a universal theme of star crossed lovers who lives are doomed due to a few pivotal decisions. The heroine (or villain, depending on your outlook) of the story is Eustacia Vye, a dark haired beauty who longs to escape the rural life on the heath for adventure and culture in Paris or other large city. She is romantically involved with Damon Wildeve, the local inn keeper, but chooses to marry Clym Yeobright, a successful businessman in Paris who has returned to the heath to visit his mother. Although, their marriage starts off strong, Clym wants to leave the big city and settle down in rural Egdon Heath and Eustacia still longs for more excitement. To add to this love triangle, after being rejected by Eustacia, Damon marries Clym's cousin Thomasin, although he still loves and longs for Eustacia. And to add even more to the mix, Diggory Venn has declared his love for Thomasin.

But Return of the Native is not a convoluted soap opera love story. At several key moments in this book, the characters come to a decision point - sometimes as simple as whether or not to open a door - and the choice they make sets the story - and the tragedy - on its way. Added to this is the beautiful description of Egdon Heath and the lives of the people who work the land. These characters not only add a touch of humor to a pretty bleak story, but also provide wisdom and an interesting perspective on life.

Beautiful, soothing narration by my favorite - Simon Vance.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel haunts me with its characters and settings. Excellent in every way.

[mritchie56 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hardy's wife has been quoted as saying that, for all the memorable female characters he created, Hardy knew nothing about real women. I can believe that. Though I enjoyed this book, it plays out like a variation on Far From the Madding Crowd, with another woman, Eustacia Vye, who suffers and causes others to suffer, yet doesn't seem to act in a psychologically consistent or realistic way. As in Madding Crowd, the most sympathetic character gets some happiness in the end, but no one else does. Physical descriptions are gorgeous.

[jkdavies · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked it, but it was a trudge. There isn't enough rain on the cover!

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are things I loved about this book and things I strongly disliked. The good things: the description of the heath, which elevated it from simply the setting to character-like status; the character of Eustacia Vye; the serious issues portrayed such as love, loyalty, infidelity. The not-so-good: some of the characters (Clym, Damon) were largely archetypes; Diggery is more of a vehicle to make things happen than a solidly-drawn person; the soap-opera nature of the plot and much of the dialogue.Hardy is a good enough writer that I still liked the book overall and am glad I read it.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I did it! I persevered and finished off this book just 20 minutes before it was due to vanish from my Kobo in a virtual puff of smoke. After that slow start that had me despairing that anything was ever going to happen, things did pick up and the plot moved along fairly briskly. As the rating says, I'm glad I read it, and I would read more Hardy. In the future, though, I'll be more judicious about how many of those copious footnotes to chase down, as I found more often than not that rather than adding to my understanding of the book they simply impeded the flow of the narrative and made it seem more choppy and uneven than it probably is in actuality. Too many of them were about minute differences between the manuscript version used here (the 1878 serial publication) and later editions, which would have been immensely helpful if I were studying it and looking to make comparisons. As just a regular old reader, however, I found I didn't really give a dingdangdoodle. And I still maintain that I read more than enough about that damned heath in the opening chapters to last me a lifetime. Good grief, no wonder everyone in this book is so freaking depressed. They must have had to listen to Hardy describe their homeland one too many times down the pub.

[wrmjr66 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel has all the hallmarks of a classic Hardy novel: doomed love affairs, characters who make poor choices, a portentous environment. Added together, though, it falls a bit short of Hardy's best novels. I think the main problem is that all the characters are either uninteresting or ambiguous at best. Eustacia is probably the most interesting character as the love interest to the "Native" of the title, but she is still one-sided; all she wants is to get out of the heath and live a glamorous life in Paris. Of course, such aspirations are doomed from the outset in Hardy, and her dashed dream is the cornerstone that brings down all the others. Despite its weaknesses, its typical Hardian (Hardy-esque?) strengths make it a worthwhile read.

[wordygirl39 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my favorite Hardy novel and I love all of Hardy's novels passionately. He's one of my favorite writers, forever. This man understood and dared to write about the lives of women in a time when women didn't count--and he did so without sentimentalizing them. I adore Eustacia, and if she had but lived a hundred years later, all her problems would not be problems.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hardy weaves a tale of passion and tragedy on Egdon Heath in his fictional Wessex. Eustacia Vye's desire to lead a life elsewhere is dashed when she marries Clym Yeobright (the Native) upon his return from Paris. The lives of this couple and their friends and families are depicted in detail in Hardy's penetrating portrayal of the community on the heath. The final section provides some hope for the future, tempering the otherwise bleak landscape of the novel.

[wenestvedt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's nothing like a heavy dose of dark Hardy to wring a deep sigh from the cheeriest breast.

[bilblio · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Oh how I hate this book. I had to study it for English A-level and reading it was torturous. It took me so long, as I kept falling asleep I was so bored.Chapter 1 describes a moor. Chapter 2 describes a man walking across the moor. Chapter 3 describes the man meeting someone on the moor... and so on.The moor is the main character in the book (we concluded at A-level), and while I can spend hours watching the changes on the moors opposite my house I don't really want to spend hours reading about one. I really like Hardy's other novels but I'll only be reading this again if I'm suffering from a prolonged bout of insomnia.

[schmerguls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jan 16, 1965: As Winston Churchill lies dying, I have finsihed re-reading Hardy's Return of the Native. I last finished reading it Nov 24, 1946, and my sole comment in my diary re the book at that time: "I didn't like it." This is the most astonishing thing, since this time I was tremendously impressed. That I could pass off so negatively such an impassioned impressivel-constructed novel is quite a revelation. I liked Eustacia Vye (Iam always amused by Hardy's women's names: Bathsheba, Lucretia. Eustacia, Thomasin) and regretted her death, altho of course Damon Wildeve was a most non-sympathy-arousing figure, and his death bothered me not at all. And I did like Diggory Venn and was happy to see him marry Thomasin, rather than Clym Yeobright doing so, toward whom i felt nothing, It seemed to me he was wrong to pay so little attention to Eustacia's wishes--he was pig-headed. I reconize the description of Egdon Heath as masterpiecey, altho I was not so impressed as some. How I would like to go to Wessex and especially Egdon Heath, to retrace all these things. But then, I suppose, when and if I get there, I'll have forgotten all of the stories and the scenes and sites will mean much less. However one would think enterprising Wessex-ers would have prepared a guidebook which would contain appropriate selections from Hardy.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sad but interesting story. The story includes several tragic characters of which several die. Thomas Hardy twines an interesting set of relationships and personalities in the story. He is an excellent author and I highly recommend his writings.

[lit_chick_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

2007, BBC Audiobooks, Read by Alan RickmanThe Return of the Native, set exclusively on Egdon Heath, opens with reddleman Diggory Venn transporting home a naïve, disgraced Thomasin Yeobright, who was to have married innkeeper Damon Wildeve, earlier in the day. Wildeve, we soon learn, is preoccupied with the novel’s heroine, Eustasia Vye, undoubtedly one of literature’s great characters. Eustasia is intelligent, devious, passionate, and a manipulative object of desire – I did not find her likeable, but she was completely enthralling. Believing herself superior, she detests life on the Heath, and in this vein, she sets out in self-serving pursuit of Clym Yeobright, the “native,” who has just returned to Egdon from Paris, where he has been living a prosperous life as a diamond merchant. Twists of fate thwart even the best laid plans, of course, and the characters are inexorably entwined in complex relationships which Eustacia’s ambition has set in motion.Hardy’s language is beautifully mellifluous; the novel’s narrative is richly layered, read in many voices. Themes include the celebration of the pagan, the primitive, and the pastoral. Hardy glorifies the simplicity of life for the working classes and celebrates the pastoral for its superiority. Egdon Heath is a character in its own right; Clym experiences perfect harmony with nature when he goes to work cutting furze:“Bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. The strange amber-coloured butterflies which Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. Tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskillful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. In and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. Litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen.” (Bk 4, Ch 2)The Return of the Native is timeless, the mark of a true classic for me. I cannot say enough about Alan Rickman’s accomplishment as narrator. Sublime! Highly recommended.

[jedijane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Return of the Native is simply a fictional marvel; moving me as a teenager as much as it did as an adult. Its characters are so rich, yet none so omnipresent and foreboding as the Heath itself, which pervades the lives of all of the book's characters. I don't often give 5stars, but just thinking about this makes me want to read it again.

[aethercowboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Return of the Native is one of those books you're forced to read in high school. And as such, you're prone to hate it, because high school English teachers make you dissect the creature of literature before you actually get a chance to observe it in action, and you are forced to make observations on the structure of the cold, dead literature, instead of actually observing the living literature in its natural environment.If this is you, please give it a second chance.The story itself is all in the title: someone comes (back) to town. This town, Egdon Heath (one of the few towns in non-genre literature to be widely considered a character in its own right), and its inhabitants receive Clement "Clym" Yeobright back from Paris.It was Thomas Wolfe to whom we attribute the quote "You can never go home again." This is not to mean "We'll lock up behind you, and post sentries," but rather, as time flows, nothing is truly immutable. When you do come back home, it won't be the same. Some furniture will be moved, everybody will be older, and things will be different.But things that are different aren't always bad. You could meet that nice raven-haired lady everyone thinks is a witch, and end up marrying her. You, thinking about settling down, her, thinking about escaping the malevolent town in which she lives.Such is life, especially life in Edgon Heath.This book is recommended for those who have read and enjoyed other works by Hardy, or who enjoy other literary achievements of the time. Also recommended for rereading anybody who was forced to read it in high school.

[maowangvater · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Egdon Heath is a sparsely settled wilderness in the southwest of England. It’s dominated by the wind, the sky and the feral vegetation of fern and furze. It is, as the author introduces it in the first chapter, “a face on which time has made but little impression.” To its native inhabitants it’s a quiet county refuge from the bustle and commotion of the mid-nineteenth century, but to young Eustacia Vye it’s a wilderness of exile from civilized life from which she has little hope of escape. Damon Wildeve, her former boyfriend and owner of the local inn is about to marry Tamsin Yeobright, a pleasing and innocent girl from a good family, and Eustacia is suffering bitter pangs of envy and jealousy. Damon wasn’t all that much of a catch, but emotional entanglement with him was her only source of relief from the tedium of county life. And then she hears that Tamsin’s cousin is coming for a visit. He’s a clever and promising young man, a diamond trader who lives in Paris – Paris the heart of civilization, culture and beauty. But how will she manage a visit to the home of her rival? Eustacia begins to scheme. The characters carry their passions, pride and false assumptions about the motives of their fellows with them as they criss-cross the heath, but ultimately human plans are overwhelmed by the geographies of heath, history, and social convention. But in this reading is of the final, 1912, edition of the novel, only one is able to fulfill his desire. Architect turned novelist Hardy constructs from a realistic masterpiece of beautiful and brooding tragedy. And for the listener, the combination of Hardy’s prose and Rickman’s voice is a rich and sensual delight.