As many of my readers know (thanks, both of you) I have been reading Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. I have sworn that not only would I obsessively up my readership, I would also include book reviews (for my own good, for your own good, just to make a point, because I feel like, because my analytic writing is really horrifying so I must find some way to improve it, etc...) on my blog. I hope that the more of these I do the better they become.
I think that there are enough social parameters that I can skip over when it comes to this novel-- it was banned for obscenity, it contains language that was considered unacceptable, etc. As I had written previously, this was the first D.H. Lawrence novel that I have read, though I have read some of his short stories and I wasn't unaware of him as a writer, and I had some concept of him as an artist. I had a friend who was obsessed with good ol' D.H. and would claim up and down that there wasn't a writer in print who could match Mr. Lawrence at fiction.
There is no great action in this novel; most of the work happens within conversations and private thoughts. The novel is known for obscenity and for sex-- as a post-post modern reader this is, of course, funny and uncomfortable. The sex, and there is a bit of it, is not at all obscene by today's standards. This was the first book of 2011 that I have finished, and after a point I had to start kicking myself into reading until the book was finished. I enjoyed it, and I could understand and identify with some parts of the narrative-- but I couldn't help but be off-put by the overwhelming feeling that D.H. Lawrence couldn't really understand the female psyche at all. I'm sure that this is something that most female readers can appreciate and identify with; I have heard the same sentiment uttered on other female ran book review blogs.
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