Thomas Hardy is not merely master storyteller, there is much more to the superb author than that. It is difficult to decide which facet of his excellence to go into first and which is the best and so on.
There is the genuineness of settings and descriptions of his time and place, which might seem trivial but really is not easy to achieve. There is the human nature and its vagaries, especially when it comes to interactions of people with one another and with ambient society. There is the series of events that are as genuine as in real life, with few major happenings and their ripples, reactions of various characters major and minor, and events caused by people as well as by fate.
But the best of all is his lyrical, poetic descriptions of the earth and heavens, of perfectly ordinary people and their reactions to it all, in a slow and deliberate tempo that gives one far more than if one were actually experiencing it all first hand.
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This work perhaps is best in that respect in that it begins with rhythms of life of a shepherd who is prudent and competent at everything he does, which includes his ability to tell time by looking at skies and to know which sheep needs precisely what, to know that harvest needs action now before rains come pelting down and destroy all the work of the year of all the men. Then there is the funeral scene with its dense fog that he describes as unshed tears suspended in air and thick on the trees.
As to the characters and story that grows out of the people and their nature described so well, few could do it so well. The bewitching beauty who likes her independence and her very strength and nobility of character that - along with her innocence - makes her a prey to the vagaries of an unstable vain man who is not without feeling but is without much conscience or strength when it comes to responsibility, after she has not accepted a man she liked and could be friends with and work with, and after she has innocently been the cause of a noble character man of wealth falling in love with her deeply, is a facet of human interactions that most would not look twice at, except perhaps to comment that she deserved it. That she did not so deserve even though it was her faults and mistakes that caused it is made clear by this author even through his less noble characters.
That it all ends happily after deep tragic events muted and otherwise, is the final satisfaction of this work. With Hardy, that is not always the case.
