I got it! I knew the ending before the secret was revealed and I was right! Oh yeah! This is a cute little story by one of my favorite authors. Thomas Hardy is such and under-appreciated author! His Tess of d'Urbervilles still gives me the willies, even though I read it over 15 years ago! I ought to read it again...just BECAUSE.
The tone of the story is not really one of joviality even though the whole story is set at a party--a christening for a baby girl. At the same time, I found myself smiling at odd times throughout the story. It's darkly ironic and weird....not much unlike Sweeney Todd....ok, no. That's not right. More like Arsenic and Old Lace light-hearted dark comedy! Not really FUNNY necessarily, but odd and very strange.
If I could ask Thomas Hardy one question, I would ask him (and other authors who write with strange twists at the end) what his process was to get him through the story so he gives just enough hints that if the reader is REALLY paying attention, the reader GETS it, but not so much that your average reader who is simply reading a story for the sake of reading it (as most students in literature classes do) gets it too early. I love stories that leave me guessing. The fact that I GOT this story fairly early on did not take away from my enjoyment of the story, for once....which says an awful lot about what a GREAT, amazing writer Thomas Hardy is!
(Can you believe this post and the previous one are so short?!)
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