Fortunately, His Writing Got Better ... I Think

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Whatta potboiler this was! And as lame his use of mystery conventions (I was fairly groaning at the creakiness of it all) was, the heavy-handed manipulations had my heart rate up and drove me on to the end of it.

As for the characters, the main ones weren't very round or realistic (the young Cytherea was as wet a crustacean that ever got herself stuck in a pot and transferred to boiling water), but that was probably indicative of the time it was written. The heroine, assigned to do some research to help her case threw up her hands after one session of looking through newspapers and went palpitatin' to a chair, leaving her brother and lover to do all the legwork.

Who really believes that you can actually catch your death of cold out at night following a miscreant or that you can take to your bed, have what sounds like a stroke at bad news, be told you will recover, but because you've had them before know for certain that you won't?! What sense does that make?!

Read it for the laughable situations (keep that table between you and the Bad Man!) and dramatic hyperbole which have to be seen to believed, but there are some nice descriptions and amusing rude mechanicals. Oh, and a punchline at the end!


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