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What Members Thought
I liked this book more than I thought I would. I didn't find it as depressing as other people did, I guess because I thought the characters were so flawed, naive, and just plain dumb. The first part of the book I actually laughed at how naive they were. The "hanging" was a terrible part of the story though and completely tragic. I did feel that the story had a tendency to go on and on and could have been shortened quite a bit. Overall, an unusual story that makes you think.
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Sep 04, 2021
Kallie
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
novel-classic
This story is heart-wrenching. I don't think I can hear the name Jude without sympathizing with that person as star-crossed. Jude is wonderfully evoked as a dreamer whose dreams are constantly thwarted: by his own sense of responsibility, by classist Victorian English society, by human perversity. As always, readers get Hardy's marvelous depictions of character in context: era, environment, landscape, characters; Jude, Sue, Arabella, Father Time. And Westminster is also a character in this story
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I read this 5 years ago and never reviewed it. We were talking about depressing books tonight, though, so I just want to add that this was the most depressing book I've ever read.
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Nov 13, 2010
Sandra
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Jan 17, 2011
Nina
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Apr 21, 2014
Meg
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Jun 05, 2016
Jim Townsend
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Erica Renée
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Mar 26, 2018
Erica
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May 01, 2018
Susan
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Nov 20, 2018
Chrissie
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Nov 24, 2020
Jamie
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Aug 12, 2023
Michelle
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Sep 13, 2023
Karigan
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May 09, 2025
Lisa
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