Under the Greenwood Tree

Jul 21, 2025 5:08 AM

Author:Thomas Hardy,Tim Dolin,Tim Dolin,Tim Dolin,Patricia Ingham

The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village's musicians with his decision to abolish the church's traditional 'string choir' and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men - a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. Under the Greenwood Tree follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing.

Reviews

An astonishing performance, fluent, profound, angry. It made me laugh; it made me think; it made me envious

—— Irish Times

Probably one of the best Irish novels to have appared in the last decade. It goes straight for the jugular

—— The Times

The eponymous antihero of this splendid anti-coming-of-age novel is a classic Irish rogue: handsome, charming, astute, articulate, arrogant, irresponsible, passionate - above all, a chap who can make you laugh three times per page... Underneath all the wordplay, [Wilson] reveals with true eloquence the horrors of growing up during the Troubles

—— Publishers Weekly

A splendid novel, beautifully conceived and crafted.

—— Pat Conroy

Mythical and mystical, Mistress of Spices is reminiscent of fables and fairy tales. . . . The story Divakaruni tells is transporting, but it is her gift for metaphor that makes this novel live and breathe, its pages as redolent as any freshly ground spice.

—— Booklist

For ARRANGED MARRIAGE, 'As irresistible as the impulse which leads her characters to surface to maturity, raising their heads above the floods of silver ignorance'

—— New York Times Book Review

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