Book Review: Jude the Obscure

Having just (this morning) finished Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, I thought it pertinent to share my thoughts and reflections on it while it's still fresh in my mind. Also, I have today off and therefore have no excuses.


This novel is the story of one man whose life is ridden with small tragedies, any one of which could potentially have broken a person completely.

As a young boy whose parents have both died, Jude lived with his Aunt Drusilla in a small farm town, where he dreamed of growing up to become a scholar at Christminster (Hardy's version of Oxford). Attaining various old and used Greek and Latin schoolbooks, he taught himself to read in the old languages by studying day and night. As life often goes, Jude is never able to realize his dream, the tragedy of which lies in the fact that he both wants it more and is more worthy of a degree than most graduates.


Picture is of Christopher Eccleston, actor in the movie representation of the novel.

He is first detained from Christminster by falling most unfortunately in love with a girl who aimed to entrap him from the start. Arabella is one of the most realistic characters in literature, in that she's exceedingly false. All that appears positive about her (her adorable dimples, her shining hair, her sweetness and innocence) is fake, a lie, or an act. Dimples? She's learned to suck in her cheek just right. Voluminous, shining hair? She wears a hair piece, which she pins onto her existing hair each day, taking it off each night before bed. Innocence? Jude soon learns that she has had other male partners before him and has worked in a tavern as a barmaid. She and Jude as a couple are a tragedy in themselves, and they unsurprisingly do not last long.

The other major relationship of Jude's life is with his cousin, Sue, whom he is head over heels in love with. Sue leads him along for the majority of his life, the dangling carrot just out of reach. While they do manage to have two children together, the tragedy that befalls them is too shocking and too important to the plot to describe here.

Perhaps most ironic for me is that despite all of his well-meaning efforts, Jude dies alone and in pain, with only the distant church bells of Christminster to keep him company in his last moments. Most painful is that at that moment, the university was granting an honorary doctorate to some likely undeserving fellow, while its most staidfast supporter lied in bed, taking his final breaths.

While a bit slow-moving, the novel is an excellent representation of how life can be if you let it get away from you. Without perspective, life can be seen as nothing more than a series of small and large tragedies with a few joys sprinkled in between. If we don't enjoy the little moments that constitute the majority of our existence, we'll have as much to show for ourselves as poor Jude. We won't always get what we want out of life, but to only keep our eyes on the horizon and never on what is before us, we'll miss what's happening right here, right now.

X-traordinary X-Chromosomes, Part 2

Another woman whose writing I am absolutely in awe of is Arundhati Roy. She's phenomenal. Her novel, The God of Small Things, is quite possibly my all-time favorite book. If not, it's definitely in the top 3 or 5. Again, it isn't only the subject material that makes it great. I love that her prose is more like poetry than any other novel I've read. The story itself is of two young twins in Kerala, India in the 60's, but to limit this book to a plot description would not do it justice. The phrasing that Roy uses is vibrant and exotic. The book positively thrums in your hands when you hold it. Her words have a pulse. The pages bleed. Every time I pick it up I am rewarded. Open it to any page, any moment, any sentence. It's breathtaking.

Margaret Atwood is a contemporary author whose novels are right up there with the classics. Animal Farm. Brave New World. 1984. Distopias, right? The opposite of utopian paradise, where the chaotic is norm and existence has been turned onto its figurative head. Orwell and Huxley are literary icons when it comes to this style of writing. They make social commentary by creating caricatures of society and stretching the negatives so insanely out of proportion that the reader can’t help but notice. I think that Atwood should permanently be added to the list of distopian masters. (Ayn Rand, too, but I’m not as familiar with her work.) Her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is perhaps the work she is best known for. And rightly so – a religious coup occurs in government and nuclear war is waged across the globe, leaving behind a worldwide inability for women to conceive. A smattering of women are still fertile, and these “handmaids” become property of the government and are made responsible for repopulating the human race. Brilliant plotline. One of my favorites - and incidentally, another commonly banned book. (My favorite!)

X-traordinary X-Chromosomes, Part 1

As a writer, there are several female authors who are super-fabulous in my book (so to speak).

Barbara Kingsolver is... awesome. Awe-inspiring. Her storytelling is top-notch, and her coolness factor gets a boost because she's a biologist as well as an author. So aside from being insanely well-written, her books teach me things I never would have learned in school. Prodigal Summer is a great example - her detailed descriptions of insects and plantlife are fascinating, and I credit this book with being the impetus behind my taking up gardening this spring. I also now know (from her descriptions) that honeysuckle is both a weed and one of the most lovely scents known to man. See? Education. She also provides a breath-of-fresh-air outlook on wild coyotes and why natural predators should not be killed en masse by humans. Despite PS's lusciousness, my favorite of hers is still The Poisonwood Bible. Truly epic. Four sisters are carted off to the Congo when their bible-toting, southern Baptist, hellfire and brimstone preaching Daddy agrees to head up a Christian mission in the jungle. Bring faith, "the way, the truth, and the light" (if you will) to the heathen of Africa. Their story is told from the point of view of all four sisters as well as their mother, over the course of three generations. Intense. Life-changing. Seriously.

Sena Jeter Naslund wrote another of my all-time favorite contemporary novels, Ahab's Wife. I read this in high school and can scarcely remember anything about it except that it's from the point of view of Captain Ahab's wife. Yes, the same Captain from Moby Dick, who hobbled around the decks of the Pequod and hoped to capture the ever-ellusive white whale. While I cannot remember much about the plot, I definitely remember it being so good and so well-written that I didn't want the book to end. I felt warm and cozy every time I picked the book up. I tend to think that the subject material wasn't the reason, since I vaguely remember a scene featuring cannibalism. At least I know now from writing this that 1) I need to read this book again, clearly, since I cannot remember a single important plot detail, and 2) I've been including this book in my list of favorites based on my memory of how reading it made me feel. I can say that in reading Four Spirits, I know that this has not been in vain. FS is phenomenal as well. Note to self, add all Naslund's works to my Amazon Wish List. Christmas is a' comin' folks!

More later...

American Pastoral. Incredible.

This book is everything that is right with modern literature.

Roth's prose is some of the most moving, beautiful, and honest that I've ever read. I have many, many favorites, but his work is so far beyond most things that are on the shelves these days that it warrants a brief mention, if nothing else.

And what a concept. An all-around champion athlete grows up to inherit his family's glove factory in Newark, New Jersey. He marries former Miss New Jersey, and they have a daughter, Meredith, whom they call Merry. They have the picture-book life, until Merry grows into the worst kind of angsty teenager. (Not the Twilight-watching, bitchy teenage girls that most families are familiar with...) She sets off a bomb in the local general store, killing a local doctor, in an attempt to bring attention to the war in Vietnam.

The entire book is about the main character's struggle with whether he and his wife are inherently to blame for what their child did. And since it's Roth, it's detailed and stark and it grabs you by the heart and won't let go.

Incredible.