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Nov 21, 2010

karen rated it:

jude the obscure is one of my favorite books of all time. and reading the biography of him now is making me very antsy to reread this. it used to be part of my "summer reruns" ritual; to reread all my favorites each and every summer. then i got old and realized that kind of thing was a luxury i would have to give up, or risk missing out on all kinds of books that are currently crowding my shelves and toppling over on my floor. jude the obscure was introduced to me at the tender age of More...

71 comments like (60 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2011

Eric rated it:

If you like sunshine, unicorns, and lollipops, then you probably won't like this book. If it's raining and you're vaguely manic depressive or if you just want to sit around for a few hours and feel sorry for someone other than yourself - well, Jude's your man.

I can't fault Hardy's talents at controlling the mood. Even before it became horrendously horrendous, there was a pall of doom that hung over everything that poor Jude touched.

2 comments like (21 people liked it)

Jul 21, 2008

Martine rated it:

If it weren't for the fact that it's somewhat whiny and depressing (and that's putting it mildly), Jude the Obscure would be an ideal book for secondary school pupils struggling with their book reports. See, the way Hardy wrote the novel, the reader is not required to think for himself about what the characters are like and why they suffer the misfortunes they do. Hardy spells it all out for him, mostly by having the characters analysing themselves and each other ad nauseam. Thus the reader is t More...

4 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 04, 2011

Mariel rated it:

It has been a long time since I have read Jude the Obscure. I was fourteen or fifteen (ninth grade of high school age, either way). I'm thirty-one as of this writing. I don't know if it would do anything near to what it did to me back then. Not that I'm an entirely different person all the way, or anything. I'm depressingly related to the me of back then. Lonely and always needing some solace connection to avoid abandonment. Depressing. I "lost" a friend today (officially. It would pro More...

93 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Drew rated it:

Jude is every man. He is obscure, in that his choices make no sense, and yet complete sense. He manages to impregnate a local woman he has no aspirations to marry, and yet does. He abandons hope for a rewarding and successful career. Then he carries on with his cousin, mainly because she is a way out of his dull life. All along, we are reminded of what could have been, if only this man could settle for one woman. He meets the best end for a character I've ever read, and one that is more th More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 24, 2011

Christopher rated it:

A few days ago I finished Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure. I was completely overwhelmed and truly needed a few days to reflect upon the experience and collect my thoughts before attempting a review. Bear in mind too, that this is the first time that I have read Jude, and I sincerely believe that this novel may require a lifetime of reading and study in order to fully tease out and understand the import of Hardy's message.

First, a little background about the novel. This More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2008

Jessica rated it:

If I remember correctly, this book is a real laff riot, with a touchingly sweet and uplifting message. I think I read somewhere that Hardy was feted in the streets of his hometown Christminster and given the Feelgood Author of 1895 Award for this baby, and rightly so! What a heartwarming gift for someone who's feeling down, such as a student who's just lost his financial aid, or someone you know who's trying to make an unconventional relationship work despite social strictures. Okay, full disclo More...

39 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2007

Ted rated it:

i've avoided thomas hardy for most of my life: first from ignorance, then on the advice of a few friends whose taste i trust. then i read an inspirational article in the tls this summer, on the relationship -- both personal and working -- between hardy and henry ibsen, which directed me towards jude the obscure. the description i found there led me to hope that the novel's themes (anticlericism, the emerging modern person, etc) would be right up my alley. so i took the dive.[return][return]i wis More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Chris rated it:

To say that the book is bleak is to say that the sun is warm. Bleak is the entire point of Jude the Obscure. In fact, most of Thomas Hardy's works can be summed up with that same word.

Characters in Hardy's books make bad decisions. As a reader, you "watch" them make bad decisions, and you know that there will be consequences. But Hardy never lets you believe that all of the misery in your life is self-inflicted - because even when his characters try to make the right de More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2007

Lauren rated it:

Just about killed me. An incredible, crushing novel. Hardy writes what I feel. If I didn't know any better about Hardy, I'd think this novel was the 19th-century "Requiem for a Dream," the equivalent of an anti-emotional, anti-adultery PSA. That's how harsh it is. I know a lot of people were made to read it in high school, but then again, I had the weird childhood. The epitome of a tragic figure, Jude Fawley is shut down at every turn... or built up slightly, only to lose everything. T More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2008

Sarah rated it:

As with Tess, this book concerns the injustices inherent to conventional society with particular emphasis on marriage and religion. Unlike Tess, it's written primarily from the male perspective -- and perhaps more closely reflects Thomas Hardy's own point of view.

I found it validating and infuriating by turns. At times, it was disheartening. I very much related to Sue but couldn't quite discern Hardy's tone in regard to her. (I wish reviewers would stop calling her a frigid narcissis More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2011

Crystal rated it:

So if you are a literary person and have read Thomas Hardy before, then go ahead and read this one. If you haven’t read any other Thomas Hardy works, PLEASE don’t start with this one. I took a class on Thomas Hardy literature because it was taught by one of my favorite professors. I visited “Thomas Hardy” country in the southern westerly region of England because it was an opportunity to travel abroad. I’ve read several of Hardy’s novels – but none were quite as depressing and dark as this o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 25, 2011

Richard rated it:

Sinking into the abyss.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2011

Amanda rated it:

Jude and Sue are two distant cousins from a family that has had bad luck with marriage. They’ve both been warned not to marry anyone, but both do, and both marriages fail. Now they are in love with each other, but decide that the only way to stay in love with each other is to continue to live together outside the conventions of marriage.

Jude the Obscure was Thomas Hardy’s last novel. It was so controversial and caused such an outrage in the Victorian reading public that he decided ne More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2011

Charlotte rated it:

I tossed this into my suitcase on my way to Oxford and only realized after I had arrived that it is set in Oxford. After that, of course, I had to read the book. I enjoy Thomas Hardy's writing as much in this book as in Tess. For some reason, I love the many allusions, the heavy foreshadowing, and his earnest, suffering characters.

However, I found the plot much less believable in this book than in Tess. I feel that tragedy should have a feeling of inevitability but the main trag More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2008

Jamie rated it:

If you are looking for a good cry, Thomas Hardy is always there. I did not like Jude the Obscure nearly as much as I have liked some of Hardy's other works (i.e. Tess and Return of the Native), but I still very much enjoyed it. I never really liked Sue Brideshead as a character, but I found myself rooting for Jude the whole way through the book and hoping that she would say yes to marriage. Alas!

By the end of the book I was sobbing. Not that I didn't know it was coming. Hardy ha More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2008

Choupette rated it:

More like 3.5.

I felt misled about this book. It wasn't nearly as dark and depressing as it claimed to be, and as such was disappointing to me. Also it seemed to be less about Jude's struggles to get into a university (indeed he seemed to give up rather easily to my mind) as promised by the blurb, than about his romantic trials and tribulations, particularly those involving Sue Bridehead, whose character, incidentally, drove me up the wall. A more pathetic, snivelling, 'quivering', de More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2007

Elwood is currently reading it

It's a classic. The edition I own is actually a British paperback that I bought in 1976, when I was 20. I started it at that time but didn't finish it; picked it up again 10 or 15 years later and read it through. I found the story gripping but was irritated by the arbitrary-seeming strokes of misfortune that afflict the main character. I've since read several of Hardy's earlier novels ("Far From the Madding Crowd", "The Mayor of Casterbridge", "A Pair Of Blue Eyes" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2008

Colin rated it:

I bought this book so long ago. During my sophomore year in high school, I was in Kaufman and Hart's "The Man Who Came to Dinner," a play littered with literary allusions. I don't know why, but I decided that I was going to make my way through them.

Eight years later, I have completed the first of the books, and it was great. Last fall, I read "Far from the Madding Crowd," but this was much better. Mostly over 400 pages of Victorian prose is not easy to get t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 09, 2008

Amy rated it:

This was difficult to rate. I wholeheartedly agree with another reader who wrote: "Some days it was a five star read and others a two, with me wanting to throw it at a wall." The characters were so human, so painful in their weaknesses. It was heartbreaking to witness the obscure (yes!) demise of humans with so much initial promise. I'm half-cursing Hardy. But he does make his statement (shockingly for the time period) about marriage, social norms, feminism. Sue drove me crazy th More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 29, 2008

Rob rated it:

This man can write! It was recommended to me by Nicholas Manning, but he failed to mention that the man can write. Very beautiful, economical, unselfconscious prose that is refreshing if you've been working through too much Don DeLillo and Martin Amis.

I'm only about thirty pages in, but so far the plot is basically the same as Harry Potter (with about the same depth of charecterisation). I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles many years ago and hated it because of that stupid I-love-you-but- More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Dorothy rated it:

This one killed my Hardy reading streak. Jude is the male version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles: witless, gullible, and uber-dramatic. He wallows in self pity while stumbling through his highly improbable, moronic existence, which reads like a twisted version of "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Suicide? It's a given. Adultery? You bet. Incest, polygamy and infectious disease? Yes indeedy. I was so hardened by the grisly events of previous chapters that I found myself rejoicing a More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Claire rated it:

this book annoys me to an incredible degree, forced to study Hardy at college, i developed a loathing for his novels that has never faded. perhaps the most trying element is 'young father Time' and idea that 'dun because we are too menny' - what on earth was Hardy thinking? a child can spell 'because' but not 'done' or 'many'?

his poetry is all right, mind.

the best thing I ever learnt about TH was that when he was born, the midwife thought he was dead and chucked him int More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2007

Meaghan rated it:

Midway through I called my boyfriend, who has an English lit degree, and asked, "Um, besides all the spouse-swapping, is anything actually going to happen in this book?" He laughed and said, "Trust me. Something's going to happen."

Something did.

I finished the book at 3:00 a.m. and couldn't sleep all night. I staggered down to breakfast and sat in the cafeteria with such a traumatized expression that several friends asked me what had happened. Thomas Ha More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2008

Nate rated it:

Read this if you're looking for that final push towards suicide.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2007

Salma rated it:

I probably have no business reviewing this at all, since I've gotten only halfway through the book. And that was three years ago. I adore Hardy, so what the hell is it about this tome that had me putting it aside every time I progressed a few pages? Maybe because it was taking so long for things to happen, for Chrissake. I've read about how this book shocked society through all the horrid things that happened, and I'm like- okay, where do these horrible things happen? Page 300? Maybe I'm just hy More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2010

Michelle added it

I thought I loved Thomas Hardy. He has a way with words that places the reader at the scene and brings those scenes to life for any modern reader. However, after careful reflection, I am not too certain I stand by my conviction that I like Thomas Hardy. See, he's too depressing. Most of his characters are put into unfortunate situations, find their way out for a bit and then end up worse than when the reader is first introduced to them. This holds true with Tess of the D'Urbervilles and hol More...

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Jan 15, 2012

Michael rated it:

This is the second reading of Jude. At first reading I thought that the novel was a novel of Jude's endless strife and struggle with his ideals ending in tragedy. This time around I became more interested in Sue and her psychological nature. I searched for some solid reasons for for her sadistic behavior. Is she a passive aggressive? A new women? Is Hardy making a comment about women in general? These and other questions bothered me.
Sue has potential: she is smart, attractive; she has the More...

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Oct 23, 2011

Margarita rated it:

Masterful. Thomas Hardy's style is fully developed with this, his final work in prose. I find myself glad he didn't produce any more novels, as I am overwhelmed and exhausted by his treatment of humanity. Tess of the D'Urbervilles was inimitable to me, but Jude the Obscure is definitely the apex, peak, and pinnacle of Hardy's writing genius. He holds nothing back; he exposes every facet of human nature, knowing how gravely the topics would be received in his day. This is a bold, unwavering treat More...

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Jun 11, 2011

Steve rated it:

There may be a powerful ending in Jude the Obscure that I haven't reached yet because at this time I still have about 20% to go. But I've reached what was clearly a climax in the relationship of Jude and Sue and I've certainly read enough to talk about the book.

This novel was published in its entirety in 1895, although it ran as a magazine serial prior to that. According to Wikipedia, Thomas Hardy started working on it in 1887. The work does what I love fiction to do. It presents More...

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