There are books we admire, and books that quietly alter the way we see the world.

For me, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ (1886) belongs to the second category.

Reading it as a teenager, I encountered a form of tragedy very different from the grand falls of kings and heroes. Michael Henchard is neither monster nor saint. He is simply a man who makes choices, then spends years discovering that the past is less easily buried than he’d hoped.

Henchard’s unhappy ending shaped my reading tastes.

Looking back, from here I think we can draw a direct line from the doomed mayor to my favourite line in my favourite play, encountered a few decades later – Richard III’s heartbreaking realisation that:

‘there is no creature loves me, and if I die, no soul shall pity me’. 

Both men arrive at a similar destination. Not merely defeat, but the conviction that they have become unworthy of love or remembrance.

Henchard’s final wish is heartbreaking, but actually far more devastating than Richard’s line:

“that no flowers be planted on my grave, & that no man remember me.”

The older I get, the more that line seems to contain the whole novel.

Not just failure, but regret. Not just regret, but the desire to spare others from carrying the weight of our mistakes.

Some books stay with us because they provide answers.

Others stay because they teach us better questions.

Hardy’s did that for me.

Reading makes us see what we’ve stopped noticing.