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A review by kdawn999
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
5.0
I had to put this book down several times to get my bearings on the world again. I had fair warning--I watched the 2009 miniseries first without knowing anything of the story. Boy, was that a freight train to the heart, but something made me want to see it on the page for myself. I had a feeling the show took certain paths of interpretation I wasn't sure I would take with the text. So here's what I find: the adaptation is a pretty faithful interpretation, and some great lines are preserved. It simplifies some ultimately insignificant details to heighten the injustice done to Tess.
What the show misses out on, primarily, are all Hardy's attentions to nature versus morality versus religion. My favorite part of the book is Hardy's strong style and poetic mysticism woven throughout. In some ways, 'Tess' lends itself to film adaptation for all Hardy's attention to detail. There's a scene where Hardy describes a piece of butcher's paper flitting on the ground with the perfect artistic touch of a director who knows how to communicate story through image.
Even if some of Hardy's then-heterodox themes don't quite translate into today, there's no doubt this classic is and will remain one of the greats.
What the show misses out on, primarily, are all Hardy's attentions to nature versus morality versus religion. My favorite part of the book is Hardy's strong style and poetic mysticism woven throughout. In some ways, 'Tess' lends itself to film adaptation for all Hardy's attention to detail. There's a scene where Hardy describes a piece of butcher's paper flitting on the ground with the perfect artistic touch of a director who knows how to communicate story through image.
Even if some of Hardy's then-heterodox themes don't quite translate into today, there's no doubt this classic is and will remain one of the greats.