Most of my reading this summer has been in two novels: The Bell by Iris Murdoch and Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It was my first time reading both authors, and I found it rewarding. Murdoch, writing in the Modernist tradition, has a unique philosophical perspective, and her story centered on a failed religious community, far from a city, outside a convent of cloistered nuns. The tensions between personal desires and communal ideals drove the narrative. Hardy, a late Victorian, told a more straightforward marriage plot among simple farmers. I knew almost nothing about the novels going in, and enjoyed the surprising and believable unfolding of events in both stories.
Both writers had a great sense of setting. For Murdoch, a native bird motif highlighted the various discrepancies in her characters. Hardy described the skies and changing seasons in beautiful, elevated vignettes. He shifted to writing only poetry later in life, and his talent is clear in Far from the Madding Crowd. An important character, Gabriel Oak, represents nature, and the scenes of him quietly working a farm away from any other civilized influences are often breathtaking and transcendental. It is easy to be caught up in the frantic, often absurd, romantic exploits of the noisier characters and to forget Gabriel Oak going about his business. But as is the way with nature, steadiness and constancy win out in the end.
