" (Somehow I missed this one in my Hardy-reading kick decades ago. Have to add it in during a re-read of the oeuvre. In Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots, this book is midway into the author's personal tragedy, and thus is dark, but not as dark as he's gonna get. This is placed, along with the preceding The Mayor of Casterbridge under the penultimate subheading "Disintegration: The second stage".) "
— Richard, 1/23/2014