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You remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. From the story a beautiful young woman has to choose between three guys: one is too dull and creepy, so one is too sexy and sleazy and one is juuuuuuuuust right. Oh, wait. Sorry. That's Far from the Madding Crowd we are talking about. Within this novel by Thomas Hardy, we haven't a love triangle but a love rectangle, where three different guys vie for the love of super-pretty Bathsheba.

This all goes down in the English countryside, which is supposed to be all birdies chirping and little lambs frolicking, but because of this mad foursome, devolves into insanity, dead infants, faked deaths and jealous lovers shooting people in the chest.

The name of Far from the Madding Crowd suggests that life is way easier once you leave the hustle and bustle of the big city behind and go to find peace in the countryside. Ha! Not with these personalities. They're playing head games and drinking citrus and dealing with so much internal drama that it is a wonder that their crops get planted or harvested whatsoever.

When Thomas Hardy first published Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874, he hadn't yet become the really major deal he'd go on to be. It was Madding, however, that gave him his very first widespread success. And it isn't hard to see why. This novel is more chock-full of hot drama than a fairly English farm is filled with adorable lambs.

Thomas Hardy would eventually become famous for writing super gloomy stories like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude The Obscure. And you definitely get some of that gloom n' doom in Far from the Madding Crowd. But you also get a tiny bit of pleasure in the end, a little hilarity in the middle, and a glance of rural England that makes it seem less William Wordsworth -style idyllic and more Deliverance-style creeptastic.

Maybe that is why this novel started Thomas Hardy into the literary major league and motivated four movie adaptations: the very first in freaking 1915 and the latest due for release in 2015. That's right--this is a novel that's been being adapted to film for one hundred years. Maybe it's because Far from the Madding Crowd is a drama-filled English countryside sex difficulty, or maybe it's just because it contains a lot of adorable moments with infant sheep. You be the judge.

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