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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32650.The_Return_of_the_Native?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Return of the Native (Modern Library Classics)" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1168392019m/32650.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32650.The_Return_of_the_Native?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Return of the Native</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15905.Thomas_Hardy">Thomas Hardy</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5895223?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>Good medicine. I hated this book when I had to read it in high school. Maybe because I’d assumed from the title that it was going to be about American Indians. (In my defense, I’d been forced to read The Last of the Mohicans the previous year, and may have thought high school literature was all about the aboriginals.) Maybe because the entire first chapter is a description of Egdon Heath; one that still elicited a groan from me when I started listening to the audiobook a few weeks ago. <br/> <br/>This is the first book in an experiment my friend Toronto and I are conducting, which consists of buddying up to read books that one or the other of us hated when we were assigned to read them in high school or college. Our goal is to discover whether further experience in life and literature will change our minds about the texts. <br/> <br/>Well. All I can say is, I am now utterly fascinated with Thomas Hardy. <br/> <br/>The book offers many clever turns of phrase and arresting insights, but what really got me excited at this point in my life (read that: writing life) is the structure. I found myself caught up in my conflicting hopes for the characters, all of which hang on Eustacia’s actions. I had a very clear idea of the pros and cons of her choice between Clym and Wildeve, and I couldn’t decide which would be the best. Compromises and rewards, either way. Then Hardy takes us in a direction I wasn’t considering and the outcome is satisfying because it had been set up in advance while I was focused on the more obvious possibilities. <br/> <br/>So very like life. <br/> <br/>I haven’t read Hardy’s more famous books Far From the Madding Crowd or Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I may need to soon. I’m also interested in his autobiography. I mean, the guy was born in 1840, wrote books that were very forward thinking and risky at the same time that Dickens and Georg Eliot were being published, and died in 1928. He seems such a part of another time and way of thinking, yet he was alive and kicking in the 20th century. I guess all of our lifespans are kind of phenomenal. <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/339871?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>