Rating: WARTY!
You know times have changed significantly when you read in an older novel (this was published in 1878), "...I don't care for gay weddings" and it has nothing whatsoever to do with same sex marriage. Unfortunately that was the only bright spot I could find in thirty pages of this. Despite it being Hardy's sixth and one of his most popular novels, it was such a tedious read for me that I gave it up at that point. There's no point in reading something that just doesn't do it for you when the next book you pick might enthrall you.
The native is apparently Clym Yeobright, who is coming back to Egdon Heath after time away in Paris. He can't marry the woman he wants, and so just takes up with someone else and unsurprisingly, the marriage doesn't work. Not really an exciting story. The only reason I started in on this was because the opening sentence of the novel was featured in a Monty Python sketch and it intrigued me. Well, color me intrigued no more, I cannot commend the plodding pace of this, based on the small portion I read, and I'm moving on to something which will, hopefully, grip me from the off.
