Ventnor Library’s Reading Group meets every four weeks or so to discuss the books we have jointly read. The last meeting discussed Wendy K Harris’ The Sorrow of Sisters and Thomas Hardy’s, Jude The Obscure.
Wendy Harris’ The Sorrow of Sisters is a first publication set on our own Undercliff. It is a “really good read” as most people in the group said, and is part of a trilogy. Part love story, part ghost story, it will be interesting to see if the same characters crop up again as they were certainly not your usual Undercliff folk – or are they? Wendy came to talk to us about it, which is always a brave thing for an author to do!
She has been writing for years, starting as a child and continuing when she had her own children. We were interested to hear about the process of getting published and are looking forward to the second novel in June. One of the best things about The Sorrow of Sisters is that if you know the Undercliff, you can spend a lot of time “spotting” the locations Wendy used. Apparently the next book is called Blue Slipper Bay, any guesses where she got her inspiration?
Hardy provoked lots of comment. Quite a few of us had read other books by him and enjoyed Jude even though it is so bleak. Others struggled, but thought that it was worth it in the end as it is “so brilliantly written and powerful”. It is basically the story of Jude’s quest for intellectual fulfilment, the lack of opportunity his social position affords him and his relationships with wife and lover.
We discussed Hardy’s attitude to women during the late Victorian period. He seems to applaud woman’s struggle for independence and yet his female characters are often unsympathetic and downtrodden. This novel was Hardy’s last. It provoked such a strong and adverse reaction from the public that he devoted himself to poetry, after some clergy urged the public to burn his books! We’d recommend Jude to anyone interested in the period and in great writing. [Undercliff image courtesy of WK Harris]
