Hello, I'm David Kern.

I'm Heidi White.

I'm Karen Swallow Pryor.

And you were listening to Close Reads, a podcast for the Incurable Reader on which we are discussing,

well, I guess for the last time, Thomas Hardy's tested the Derbervilles.

Karen is our very special guest for this series.

And before we get into your questions about this book,

I just want to say, Karen, thank you so much for spending the last two months or so getting together with us and talking about this book and even engaging on the Facebook page.

So I just want to say how much of an honor it is to have you joining us

because we know you're very busy and you're currently in your summer vacation and you're still willing to do this. So thank you.

Well, it's been a joy and pleasure and you all help pick out the cover and even the selection.

So I feel like this was, you know, meant to be. So thank you.

It's a duty thing was what you're saying.

Duty and desire. Heidi, how are you? I'm doing great. I'm just really sad to be done talking to

Karen for a while. Well, we, you know, Karen has other titles in this series. So maybe next year we'll

have to just have her on and talk about the Scarletter or something, which is a book we've never done on the show and probably should

at some point. Well, we are here to answer your questions about test of the Derbavilles,

and we have quite a few. So we're just going to dive right in. As always, the Q&A,

it can be a little bit abrupt when we switch from one question to the next. So sometimes we'll get into a conversation and it'll take us away, take us on that path for five or ten minutes.

And then I'll have to bring us out of that conversation and go to the next question just for the sake of time.

So I apologize in advance for how that might feel at times when we don't quite maybe get to the bottom of every question that gets asked,

but we'll do our best to answer as many as we can.

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