I just got my copy of Tess a few days ago, so I'm only on page 40. It will probably be somewhat slow going for me, since I don't think I can read this on my lunch breaks with everyone screaming in the breakroom. Seriously, they literally scream - no matter who they're talking to or how far away they are from each other. Or I'm listening to my MP3 player, which encourages me to write rather than read.

It's not bad reading so far, although I hope Hardy doesn't make a habit of stopping the action to tell you point-blank how these characters work. There's a point where Tess comes home from a day of fun and feels guilty she left her mother alone to do the unending housework and take care of they kids by herself. But her mother didn't really mind. Yay, nice Mom. Then the mother insisted she go to the pub to get the father, but she had the ulterior motive of spending some time there to get away from the kids and feel young again. That's understandable and a nice detail.

Then we get some back story about the brood that's all younger than Tess, so she feels maternal toward her younger siblings. Then we get this:

All these young souls were passengers on the Durbeyfield ship - entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were those half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with them - six helpless creatures who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being on the shiftless house of Durbeyfield.

That just made me LOL. For one, the "difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death," reminds me of how Daniel Handler writes as Lemony Snicket, which is hilarious. And the whole thing is just laid on SO THICK. Please let me see them being shiftless and let me see their children pay for it without describing it ahead of time. Trust me to draw the conclusions you want me to draw from the events.

So yeah, that's the only observation I have worth making so far. Aside from the instance of telling v. showing, I'm enjoying the writing and the characters.