Author: Thomas Hardy
Series: -
Genres: Classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release: 2012
Source: Paperback
Pages: 328
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BLURB:
Lady Constantine, breaks all the rules of decorum when she falls in love with beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. Together, in an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observation tower, they create their own private universe - until the pressures of the outside world threaten to destroy it.
EXPECTATIONS: Over the spam of few books Thomas Hardy has become one of my favorite authors. I loved Tess, the book we did as a buddy read and I loved Far from Madding Crowd. I just love his writing style, his ideas and views on the world! I just hoped this book wouldn't disappoint and it did not!
THE WORLD: We find ourselves in 19th century. But unlike other Hardy books, where farm life takes majority of the book, this book is all about astronomy! We are surrounded by science, stars and two people in love with the sky. I really enjoyed the fact that the book circled around the character drama sure, but also the science of astronomy and the fact that a woman was so invested in this field and wanted to achieve something, understand, learn and capture the bodies of sky. It was a refreshing turn.
CHARACTERS: We have three main characters in the book: Lady Constantine, a married woman, who is left alone to take over the duties of housework, house keeping, deciding basically everything that the man would have done at the time, for her husband is at war. I found Lady Constantine, very intelligent. Not only did she run the entire household by herself, but also took on literally the stars! She was brave, smart, cunning and brave enough to stand up to the norm! We also have Swithin St. Cleeve, a young man, who is an aspiring astronomer. He was also rather pleasing leading man. He wasn't too bold or too annoying, he was just very much in love with astronomy ad maybe a little naive for the real world. And of course we have the Astronomy, an entity in the book that brings our characters together!
ROMANCE: There is this rather forbidden love in the book. Lady Constantine and Swithin fall in love due to their shared love for the stars and I would say this was the driving for of the book. The issue - Lady Constantine was eight years Swithin senior!
GOOD: I liked the fact that an older woman and a younger man fell in love. You don't get to read much about such pair and it was interesting to see how such a thing was absolutely looked down by the society. Actually I think it still is today. When a woman is older than the man, everyone kind of looks twice at them,but if it's the other way around then everything is fine. so I guess not much changed since Hardy wrote the book.
BAD: I think it was once again too long at times.
OVERALL: 100% recommend this book to a classics lover or just a book lover!
What do you think about TWO ON A TOWER?
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