hardybot 2000

I never imagined a Victorian-era love triangle could be dubbed light reading and also impossible to put down. While I am a Thomas Hardy fan, I'm not about to try to wade through one of those novels again.......but in three days I breezed through this baby, floored by the author's uncanny ability to deploy contemporary references (Roland Barthes, Marshall McLuhan, etc) to analyze his characters and their setting without shifting voice. Literary time-travel. And maybe I'm easy to please, but when you reveal that the hero's last name is Smithson right as he's examining geological strata, I'm going to assume its a reference to Robert Smithson. That's just me. Chapters probably haven't knocked as much breath out of me since The Magus, which is his masterpiece (despite the opinions of both critics and the author), but I'm probably going to read everything Fowles has written asap.

Course, I also used to think I'd purchase anything Metallica or Pearl Jam recorded.........

Just read this.
He gets drunk and picks up a whore and pukes on her in one chapter. QED.