Canter Bridge

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, narrated sparely in this Audible Books version by Jill Masters, is nearly too sad for the bearing.

Hardy sees into the human heart with an eye for our folly that is Dickensian in its penetration. He turns that gaze on his invented rural ‘Wessex’, picking up the peregrinations of a pure young woman whose every turn is stalked by shadow.

In the end, sixteen hours into drive time peppered with this listener’s audible gasps at each stunning turn, Tess becomes the victim of all that is artifice, class, and convention. In Jill Masters’ narration there is not a note of melodrama. She tells her tale with the same unflinching resignation that is Tess Durbeyfield, then Tess D’Urberville, then Tess a martyr to layers of unkindness that become in the aggregate a murderous and murdering weight.

An absolute heart-ache of a listen, impossible to forget, incapable of abbreviation. There is no shortcut to the conclusion of Hardy’s most signature work. It takes sixteen hours to get there. Listen.