Sons and Lovers

D.H. Lawrence has a beautiful style of writing. Okay, there's not much action going on and you can read this book multiple times and still not know what it's about, but this is a skill that only the most talented artists possess, to keep you interested without really knowing why?

D.H. Lawrence makes you want to read more... down the pit on Monday, get paid peanuts for your efforts, drink away the weekly pay at the pub on Friday while the wife slaves at home over the tubs and the kids play in the backyard and the sun still shines. Flowers do their thing in the glistening rays and no-one wants to think about winter.

This is as bleak and relentless as it gets. Pit life was no fun. There were no prospects of any improvement to the standard of living yet life carried on and people got through it happy and reasonably content. This is the other side of 1984 by George Orwell - not the higher or middle classes, but the lower echelons - where people actually lived life, messed up and remained happy with ignorance as bliss. It's all we proletariats will ever know, haplessly fixed to our planet while spinning out of control around the sun, oblivious to our insignificance.

This is a slice of life of the English working classes a hundred years ago. No discernible hanky panky, violence or thrills, but somehow still riveting!

I'm a bit disappointed at people swayed by modern literature dismissing this as a classic work of garble. It's disposable, down-on-the-page, almost stream of consciousness irrelevant but written in a profound, reminiscent and authentic way that you can choose to love D.H. Lawrence for if you want.

This book encouraged me to read Lady Chatterley's Lover and I enjoyed that too. Lawrence is a beautiful, mellow and descriptive writer, who is awesome to read if you can drop your expectations for any obvious or thrilling results.