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A review by thewickedwitchofthemidwest
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
2.0
2.5 stars actually. This book was the first book I have read by Thomas Hardy and I was not impressed. Under the Greenwood Tree is one of Hardy's first books, so I will have to read more before I make a judgment about his writing, but I just did not find this one to be that great. Maybe I am missing something. However, I just could not understand the point of this book unless its sole object was just to entertain. Or maybe it is just a picture of village life. Either way, it was not my favorite.
There's a choir who are ousted by their new preacher and one of the churchwardens because they prefer an organ and the hot woman who plays it. Okay, so the choir offers some comedic aspects to the story but they play a rather small role. Also, it seems like they were just thrown in there and have little to do with the actual plot.
Alright, so our main characters are Fancy Day (the hot organist) and Dick Dewey (part of the choir). When Fancy comes to town she makes quite a stir, attracting Mr. Mayble (the preacher/minister), Mr. Shiner (churchwarden), and Dick Dewey (part of the choir/just your regular sort of guy). All these characters are just annoying, especially Fancy. Fancy is beautiful and vain. She is silly and only really cares if other people admire her especially men. All the three male characters have no discernable character traits besides their interest in Miss Day. This does not bother me overly much because the book does not try to go deeper than the surface of these characters. It knows that is all there is to these men(at least from this viewpoint), so I guess this fault is forgivable. Overall, it just felt unsatisfactory like these characters had not grown or changed at all, but again that probably wasn't the point.
Mildly entertaining but I wish I would have begun with a different one of his books.
There's a choir who are ousted by their new preacher and one of the churchwardens because they prefer an organ and the hot woman who plays it. Okay, so the choir offers some comedic aspects to the story but they play a rather small role. Also, it seems like they were just thrown in there and have little to do with the actual plot.
Alright, so our main characters are Fancy Day (the hot organist) and Dick Dewey (part of the choir). When Fancy comes to town she makes quite a stir, attracting Mr. Mayble (the preacher/minister), Mr. Shiner (churchwarden), and Dick Dewey (part of the choir/just your regular sort of guy). All these characters are just annoying, especially Fancy. Fancy is beautiful and vain. She is silly and only really cares if other people admire her especially men. All the three male characters have no discernable character traits besides their interest in Miss Day. This does not bother me overly much because the book does not try to go deeper than the surface of these characters. It knows that is all there is to these men(at least from this viewpoint), so I guess this fault is forgivable. Overall, it just felt unsatisfactory like these characters had not grown or changed at all, but again that probably wasn't the point.
Mildly entertaining but I wish I would have begun with a different one of his books.