welcome to...THE MAYOR OF SEPTEMBERBRIDGE.

this is the latest installment of project long classics, a series in which i read books over the course of a month as an excuse to make puns and buy penguin clothbounds.

this month, we arrive at a lesser-known hardy, whose claim to (my personal) fame is having the most made-up sounding classic title i have ever seen. just THE [FIGURE] OF [BRITISH SOUNDING PLACE]. it's what movie characters would read in a copyright-conscious book club.

anyway. let's get into it.


CHAPTER 1
unhelpfully, this has 45 chapters, which means that every other day i will have to read 2 of them. mostly i'm choosing that process around today not being one of those days.

i have to say, i did not expect the first character we met in this to be named "mike," a name i primarily associate with my childhood friend's stepdad who thought he invented something called pizza pretzels. but then i also didn't predict the first plot point would involve book-mike selling his wife for 5 pounds, so this might just be full of surprises.


CHAPTER 2
hangxiety must be at a whole other level when you're like, "where are my wife and child? oh, duh, with the sailor i sold them to last night."


CHAPTER 3
like 15 years have passed, sailor-dad is dead, and we join susan and elizabeth-jane in looking for their no-good dirty rotten scoundrel of an original (non-sailor) dad. i genuinely can't imagine why we're bothering, but we're off to casterbridge on a tip from a toothless hag selling porridge. the usual.


CHAPTER 4
here we are told that susan "was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too many rural records show." AM I BEING LED TO BELIEVE THIS TYPE OF THING WAS COMMONPLACE??


CHAPTER 5
well, mike is the mayor. now the only thing we can hope for is that this becomes some sort of political plotline in which elizabeth-jane dedicates her life to bringing about his impeachment, for reasons of he sucks.


CHAPTER 6
not seeing what qualifies mike to be a mayor so far. he gets his best ideas from notes passed to him by waiters.


CHAPTER 7
i'm praying that the scottish guy who passed the mayor the note doesn't become a major character. nothing against the man but for some reason thomas hardy has decided to write out his dialogue phonetically.


CHAPTER 8
it's fun that across cultures and eras, humanity has always gotten drunk and wanted to sing emotional songs in crowded bars in front of their friends. karaoke would flourish in any timeline.


CHAPTER 9
honestly this has been such a great seasonal pick so far. thomas hardy has proven himself a huge fan of early autumn.


CHAPTER 10
if mike has 100 haters i'm one of them. if mike has 1 hater it's me. if mike has no haters i'm dead. no way this guy just passed the wife he sold the amount he sold her for with a note that basically says "here's your money back, meet me in secret, i'm ashamed of you, xoxo mike."


CHAPTER 11
wait...is this a second chance romance?


CHAPTER 12
ANOTHER F*CK-UP BY MIKE. oh my god!

i already was no fan of the guy based on his first instance of ruining the life of an innocent woman. i didn't need the further event of him having brought ruination once more and also recently upon another innocent woman to, like, complicate my feelings or whatever. i am under no impression that this is a good guy. i know plenty of sh*tty mayors.


CHAPTER 13
well. i guess congratulations to mike and susan on their wedding day (the squeakquel).


CHAPTER 14
this is the "Elizabeth-Jane Is Not Like Other Girls" chapter, which i should have seen coming from that manic pixie dream girl ass name.


CHAPTER 15
thomas hardy give mike one (1) redeeming characteristic challenge. this guy is the worst – now i have to read about him making fun of his employees and lashing out at people out of jealousy? susan seems to be up to something lately and i can only hope it's poison.


CHAPTER 16
now farfrae (the frenemy object of mike's jealousy and elizabeth-jane's crush) just got fired for being too popular and good at party planning. mike, know your strengths! if you have them, i mean. i'm not convinced.


CHAPTER 17
it's so funny to be like "i was going to ask you something because i like you so much...except your stepdad hates me and i'm poor and my class is bad. i guess it's a mystery! neither you nor the reader will ever know what my question would've been!" i can venture a guess, farfrae.

then again, elizabeth-jane seems truly dumbfounded, so maybe i'm a genius.


CHAPTER 18
okay. so it turns out the thing susan was up to was harboring a fatal illness. rip.


CHAPTER 19
yet another terrible mike moment i'm expected to see as good, for some reason: elizabeth-jane's mom just died and mike takes that mourning time to be like "hey, by the way, i'm your dad. the only reason your mom married the guy you thought was your dad is she thought i was dead." ACTUALLY MIKE YOU LEFT OUT THE PART WHERE YOU SOLD HER AT A DAMN FESTIVAL!

then e-j is crying, obviously, because her mom is dead and her life is a lie, and mike is like "ok i'll leave you alone" and then immediately comes back in the room to be like "can you take my last name btw? even though your mom didn't want that, and in fact it could be seen as her dying wish?" ignoring, apparently, that he wouldn't actually have known that because susan kept it a secret. then e-j is crying and filling out paperwork at the same time, a combination known as "hell on earth."

this guy pisses me the hell off.


CHAPTER 20
i'll say this, i was not prepared for this plot twist. if you care about spoilers for this 150-year-old book, you a) should not be reading this review and b) should definitely stop reading now. i'll put this in spoiler tags but i might reference it later because it's juicy and i'm only human:

Spoiler

the elizabeth-jane of the beginning of the book DIED three months after the susan-selling, and susan had a new baby with her purchaser and then named THAT baby elizabeth-jane, and she's the one who's here. not mike's daughter at all. oh my lord...

and now mike is just verbally berating e-j all the time. this guy is the WORST.


CHAPTER 21
i want this on the record: i'm predicting the new girl in town is mike's ex girlfriend from a million miles away. i predicted it when she was standing like a style icon at susan's grave forever ago in chapter 19, and i stand by it now.


CHAPTER 22
nailed it. and now, of course, mike is suddenly interested in his ex again because she's conveniently become rich. typical.

do you think my ability to predict the plot points of 19th century classics is an employable skill?


CHAPTER 23
yesterday, i wrote, "like, for example, i'm betting that now farfrae will inconveniently begin trying to court ej, and potentially be thrown off by a new crush on the hottie roommate." and i nailed it again.

we have concluded volume i and begun a love triangle.


CHAPTER 24
it's really more of a love square, except there's no connection point between two of the points due to the fact that they are legally if not biologically father and daughter. so a love U. awww.


CHAPTER 25
if i were lucetta i wouldn't marry mike either. would i develop a debilitating crush on a local farmer that threatened to ruin my reputation when i literally just had to move here because a debilitating crush ruined my reputation? maybe no.


CHAPTER 26
i thought i was a hater, but i've never spent my fortune on corn in an attempt to put my enemy out of business only to immediately have to sell all of it for a ruinous loss and immediately head to the bank to ask them to borrow the hell against my property.

i have a lot to learn from mike.


CHAPTER 27
ah, the old "women can't tell who was at fault in a wagon accident if one of the guys is hot because they get distracted" schtick. a dime a dozen.

mike, a comic book villain, has now forced lucetta to agree to marry him. awesome.


CHAPTER 28
of the two books i've read for this project about criminals making a pact to reform themselves and then becoming mayors and respected businessmen of idyllic towns in europe only to have their past discover them via unrelated judicial trial, this one has a way worse protagonist. jean valjean decimates mike in every demonstrable way.

in other words, casterbridge now knows mike is a wife-seller.


CHAPTER 29
your fiancé who is also your ex-boyfriend saving you from being murdered by a bull and then asking you in return to tell his creditor you're engaged to buy him some time on repayment and then you're like "i can't because actually married my crush last week since i hate you, specifically."

we've all been there.


CHAPTER 30
kind of a slay move by ej to be like "you are so unrespectable that actually i am going to move out of your house. also, my ex lives here now, which contributes as well."


CHAPTER 31
damn, farfrae. not even a couple days after mike's bankruptcy trial and he's moving in to his foreclosed home.


CHAPTER 32
he's got his girlfriend, his house, his furniture, his job...we're a local election and a legal adoption away from farfrae fully single white female-ing mike.

no sooner did i type that than farfrae was revealed to be our next mayoral candidate. i'm too good. if ej can just get over her crush she might have a new dad (her third for those tracking) in a chapter or two.


CHAPTER 33
well, mike broke sobriety. he doesn't have a wife to sell this time around but maybe he'll get creative.


CHAPTER 34
farfrae keeps trying to do nice things for mike and people just keep responding "ok i hear you and everything, but like...this guy hates you. you know that, right? he is airing your sh*t out whenever given the chance, just fyi."

and yet somehow farfrae thinks they're besties.


CHAPTER 35
all it takes is for lucetta to wear an ugly dress early in the morning, thereby reminding mike of how one time he sold a woman, for him to give up his hater ways. i'm built different.


CHAPTER 36
thank god for jopp, a freelance hater involved purely for the love of the game. if he didn't air lucetta's sh*t out the moment he had the opportunity who knows how long this book would be.


CHAPTER 37
some guy of royal note is coming to town for genuinely 30 minutes and, when told he can't be the welcoming committee, mike has essentially the same reaction as a young michael scott had to his mom's second marriage on the office.


CHAPTER 38
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!


CHAPTER 39
earlier in this review, i extolled my own virtues as a hater, but in truth i can only aspire to the levels that prompted the townspeople to set up a satirical play on the back of a donkey and setting it off down main street to make fun of lucetta for having dated mike.


CHAPTER 40
old-timey medicine was so whimsical. back in the day, unexpectedly seeing a puppet of yourself could cause a fatal seizure.

rip lucetta.


CHAPTER 41
i can't say i'm surprised that now EJ's dead biological dad / mother's purchaser is actually alive, and i'm not even shocked that mike lied and said EJ was dead out of possessiveness, but i will say i have no idea how we're going to wrap this up.


CHAPTER 42
it appears the answer is "mike will not have to repent for his lie, farfrae will marry EJ as if he didn't just marry somebody else who died in a completely insane way, and their forced reconciliation in the eyes of the law will make up for what we lack in any kind of character development."


CHAPTER 43
okay, mike has run himself out of casterbridge. but that is, in effect, a refusing-to-repent strategy. he didn't sneak an apology or acknowledgment out as he sprinted away. just started using "izzy" as a nickname.


CHAPTER 44
this was a nothing chapter that told us nothing we didn't know already. i can't believe this is how this book is going to end.


CHAPTER 45
no, it's actually more ridiculous than i could have imagined:

Spoiler

mike died

.


OVERALL
clearly, i had a blast and a half reading this book, and yet it was not very good. no character development, no real characterization even, no plot besides a bunch of loosely gathered plot twists.

if you're asking if this is Worth Reading in the classical sense: no. if you're asking if you should read it and you're a gal looking for a good time: yes of course.
rating: 3