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A review by hadeanstars
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
5.0
The best novel I've read this year, and it's instantly into my top 5. Top 3? Only Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls comes close to this in recent memory. You cannot compare them of course, they are both works of complete power and beauty.
Haunting, strange, intense and beautiful are all words which describe some aspect of the experience of reading this. In my view it's a more profound work than Sons and Lovers or maybe I should say that it is less conventional, and more beautiful. I could happily read it again, in spite of the haunted and sad feeling with which I was left upon completing it. It's also a difficult novel. Much of the interplay between the main characters is intense and in Birkin's expositions in particular, there are difficult and almost intangible concepts which require intense concentration to decipher. For the first third of the novel I have to admit, I was flummoxed by this. I even became slightly irritated with the author, it seemed as though Lawrence was trying to show how clever he was - not least because the character of Birkin was allegedly so nearly autobiographical, and it grated until I began to understand Birkin a little better. Ultimately he was consistent and true, and that became clear and comfortable once I had got to know him.
And not all of the concepts are easy either. The format and character of love between men is a major theme of the book. Not that this is a 'difficult' theme, only that Lawrence seemed to be on a precipice himself. It was documented that Lawrence experimented with homosexuality at the time of writing, and his wandering confusions about his own sexuality are all too clear. All the beauty and magnetism is owned by the men of the story. The women are by comparison, although not exclusively, mundane and drab, like birds of paradise.
Ultimately, this is a stunning, brilliant and beautiful novel that makes most other books I have read this year seem a little childish and shallow, even if they are not. This seems to me to demonstrate what a giant Lawrence was and remains. I will certainly read more.
Haunting, strange, intense and beautiful are all words which describe some aspect of the experience of reading this. In my view it's a more profound work than Sons and Lovers or maybe I should say that it is less conventional, and more beautiful. I could happily read it again, in spite of the haunted and sad feeling with which I was left upon completing it. It's also a difficult novel. Much of the interplay between the main characters is intense and in Birkin's expositions in particular, there are difficult and almost intangible concepts which require intense concentration to decipher. For the first third of the novel I have to admit, I was flummoxed by this. I even became slightly irritated with the author, it seemed as though Lawrence was trying to show how clever he was - not least because the character of Birkin was allegedly so nearly autobiographical, and it grated until I began to understand Birkin a little better. Ultimately he was consistent and true, and that became clear and comfortable once I had got to know him.
And not all of the concepts are easy either. The format and character of love between men is a major theme of the book. Not that this is a 'difficult' theme, only that Lawrence seemed to be on a precipice himself. It was documented that Lawrence experimented with homosexuality at the time of writing, and his wandering confusions about his own sexuality are all too clear. All the beauty and magnetism is owned by the men of the story. The women are by comparison, although not exclusively, mundane and drab, like birds of paradise.
Ultimately, this is a stunning, brilliant and beautiful novel that makes most other books I have read this year seem a little childish and shallow, even if they are not. This seems to me to demonstrate what a giant Lawrence was and remains. I will certainly read more.