Far From the Madding Crowd

Those who relished the recent PBS series will be happy to know that this audio version is read by Gabriel Oak himself--Nathaniel Parker. He and Thomas Hardy make a fine team. As the rustic workers bring in the harvest, or shear the sheep, or barter at the market--their lively dialogue projects pictures of nineteenth-century Wessex that are almost as vivid as the paintings of John Constable. Nathaniel Parker seems to be one of them--or all of them--as he slips naturally from one character to another, even capturing the voice of Bathsheba as she laments her disastrous marriage. It all comes together in the end as she and Gabriel prepare to live happily ever after, the only Hardy characters so blessed! J.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


This 1874 novel set in the English Midlands has, by its author's standards, a relatively happy ending. At least the faithful Gabriel Oak eventually marries beautiful Bathsheba Everdene,whose first husband is murdered by an insane suitor, after the husband's jilted first love dies in the workhouse. Martin Shaw, while giving spirited interpretations of the characters, lays back the narrative to the point of mumbling. The abridgment is a bit too drastic to deliver the qualities that make the book special. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine