Penguin Classics presents Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actor Steven Pacey. 'Do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life - music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going on in the great arteries of the world?' Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath. Hearing that ...
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Penguin Classics presents Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actor Steven Pacey. 'Do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life - music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going on in the great arteries of the world?' Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath. Hearing that Clym Yeobright is to return from Paris, she sets her heart on marrying him, believing that through him she can leave rural life and find fulfilment elsewhere. But she is to be disappointed, for Clym has dreams of his own, and they have little in common with Eustacia's. Their unhappy marriage causes havoc in the lives of those close to them, in particular Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover, Clym's mother and his cousin Thomasin. The Retun of the Native illustrates the tragic potential of romantic illusion and how its protagonists fail to recognize their opportunities to control their own destinies. Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives. Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.
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Return of the Native is Hardy at his very best, it is beautifully dark and dangerous, from the start to almost the very end. The characters are sublime yet believable, and the heath (the most important character of them all) positively oozes suspence and unpredictablilty. The turbulate relationships scream out disaster, and fill any reader with a sense of forboding and a desperate wish for a happy ending. However the 'Happy' end is not so comforting when it comes as it seems strangly out of place with the rest of the novel. Overall Return of the native presents a beautiful and lost world from before the wars. well worth a read dispite the lenghty sentences and the vast descriptions that may put some off.
