D.H. LAWRENCE AND ITALY is composed of three stories: 'Twilight in Italy', 'Sea and Sardinia' and 'Etruscan Places'. The first two "books" seem to be based on journals he wrote while traveling with his German born lover then wife Frieda, whom he refers to as q-b for queen bee, through various villages on the mainland of Italy and the island of Sardinia. Lawrence does not record his experience of "famous" sights in these two books, in fact he says he is not interested in historical places, museums etc. but rather he wishes to see the people and the places in the out-of-the way areas of Italy. He and Frieda travel by bus, train, and boat--close to the ground.

Those who have read Lawrence's fiction will recognize his writing. He describes what he encounters with a visceral language--people, clothing, food, establishments. Some of the places are stunning and some so filthy you wonder how he could have stayed overnight. He visits lemon and olive groves and various high places along the coast and in the interior valleys. His writing is graphic--the reader will be as appalled and enchanted. He reflects Italy just before and after WWI.

In the third book, 'Etruscan Places', Lawrence describes his visits to various Etruscan sites, including the painted tombs of Tarquinia. His writing is less descriptive than that of the first two books. He is concerned with nothing less than the meaing of life, and the conflict between religion and truth (he died a few short years later at age 44 so his reflections seem almost prescient). He muses that societies are organized around death or life. He speaks of the use of fertility symbols such as fish and lambs for Christians and dolphins and eggs for Etruscans; the significance of the color vermillion -- male body painting by warrior classes where red paint connotes power contrasted with the the red skin coloring of the Etruscan tomb portraits which seems to have connoted the blood of life. He says the Etuscans loved life and the Romans who subdued them loved power.

Lawrence's book provides good background for those who would know more about Italy. Many of the places he describes have changed since the 1920s--some for the better. The people have changed--their clothing, homes, etc. are less unique and colorful, but they are better fed, warmer in winter, and cleaner. Hopefully their lives are better, but I don't think Lawrence would agree.

If i were to read only two travel books then this would be the second one, although both my wife and an English friend read it in German translation and reported that it was terrible. Maybe it doesn't translate well. Lawrence, as young man, describes a thread running through his life as he starts the journey by heading south toward Italy on foot from Bavaria with Frida, a way of travel that many Germans still understand very well. Descriptions of people are attractive, like the one-legged Italian who tried to seduce the cold, northern women at a dance. I liked best his description of his own Alpüberquerung, his description therein of the hurried English hiker, the way that Italins have ruined the alpine valleys with industrialization. And I felt loss at his growing distance from Frida. The book made me want to see the lemon and olive trees above Lago di Garda and the villages high above the lake, but we haven't done that in spite of our nearness to the region. Gardasee is completely overrun by German tourists now, not just by those wearing heavy hiking boots.

Had the wonderful feeling of being lost in a magic world, while reading this book. Brought to the magic island of Sardinia, on an old train, on the mountains of the island. And then, when I had the chance to be there, it all became true. The same train, the same atmosphere... in a world that did not change...after all.

"St. Mawr" and "The Man Who Died," are two separate novellas brought together in this single book.

"St. Mawr" is the longer, and less interesting, of the two. While Lawrence uses his usual dramatic (and excellent) flair for describing landscapes and their reflections in personality of those looking outward at them, there's a lack of direction to this story. Even more than usual, Lawrence seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion with this story, but there's a worthy read in it anyway, for his character studies are, as always, sharp enough to draw blood. Put literally, "St. Mawr" is about two women, a mother and daughter, who upon finding a fine stallion with a wildness to it, realize that that wild natural je-ne-sais-pas is missing from all the men in their lives, leading them on an interesting - if continuity flawed - pilgrimmage.

"The Man Who Died," would get 5 stars from me on its own. This is an incredibly well written story of an alternate telling of the 3 days that Christ was dead. This is Christ as a human being, not a sacred figure, and as such, I can see why this story caused such a harsh discourse. Struggling to find meaning and reason for his tortures, Christ embarks on a three day journey after waking from the dead on the very same day he was entombed. I refuse to ruin any of the plot for you, but this retelling is magnificent, and a really in depth study of sorrow and suffering, and rebirth. You owe yourself a read of this, even if you skip "St. Mawr."

'Nathan

St. Mawr is one of the wisest books I've ever read. In it you can find insight and answers to some of the toughest questions you may ever encounter. What is it that brings men and women together? What is it that drives them apart? What exactly is it that we are doing to each other? What does it mean to be civilized? To be savage? What does it actually mean to be human?

D.H. Lawrence creates a world with very few words. These characters, though at times stereotypes or archetypes, are extremely real.

This book changed the way I look at the world, deepened my understanding of myself and of those around me.

This book kept me up until 3am one night because I just had to finish it.

'St. Mawr' is a very entrancing short story about a woman and her dissatisfaction with men as a whole. The heroine, a countrified gentile, has a wild imagination in this, and Lawrence describes her thoughts in terms of the horse's power and motion and ability. I got so caught up in this that I finished it in just over an hour. It's a very well structured read.

'The Man Who Died' has become my favourite contemporary version of the last days of Christ. It's an amazing and original story that leaves you asking questions. Many heavy handed Christians became infuriated by this story when it was published, and i'm sure many will continue to rail against it for the humanizing of thier idol.

At first glance, I wasn't aware that they were both seperate stories but, after reading 'The Man Who Died', I kept asking myself - Why are these two stories together like this? The only conclusion I could draw was, the fallibility of one and the infallibility of the other. Be advised though, D.H. does his best to derail your thinking here.

This book focus mainly on spreadsheet techniques for quantitative analysis. Though it provides several interesting topics, it maybe organize and add more issues of real world. It should also provide some basic concepts such as the simplex method of linear programming. It should also emphasize on the objectives of studying every quantitative techniques (maybe present as flowchart) before reading each chapter.

I use this book for my "Quantitative Methods for Decision Making" class and there is some involvement of mathematics. But it is just easy to understand and to use. Also the methods used here are really sort of fundamental and important. I recommend this book for those who really hate deep mathematical involvement in management science.

A young man must break away from his mother and her life before he can discover a life of his own.

I skipped over Lawrence for years. I had heard the tawdry tales of his work and felt a bodice ripper is a bodice ripper no matter what century you put it in. But I was wrong! He is a marvel. As soon as I finished Sons and Lover's I went out and got The Rainbow. S & L, reads very quickly, much like Maughm's On Human Bondage. They are both of the same period and are both loosly based on the perspective authors lives. Tantilizing, they allow us a glimpse into the emerging industrial era. The middle classes and lower middle classes are emerging into the plutocracy but slowly. All around them are the dredges of a past system. The coming of age of Lawrence as he throws off his childhood and his need to throw off his mother is engrossing, since you know it is based on real life and not a campy Sally Jessy Rapahel show. He struggles as we all struggle to make the right choices. What Lawrence does is let us in on the stuff that most novels don't let the reader know. The truth the character gives to the reader is unheard of today. Read this book and follow him from childhood of a mama's boy in a coal town in Norther England that love's, and love's, and looses only to truly love .

Forget the moral indignation, the furious condemnation of the author's morality and his state of mind. This is 'The First Lady Chatterley', Lawrence's initial stab at his most infamous novel, and the scenes that were once deemed too explicit for our sensitive eyes are nowhere to be found. Instead we are free to concentrate on the novel's plot, and a suprisingly simple one it is too. I have always thought one of Lawrence's great strengths was in making the mundane somehow extraordinary, and here he elevates an everyday love story to the level of a modern classic. Basically, a young society girl is locked in a sexless marraige to a wheel chair bound husband, and finds sexual liberation in the arms of her estate's working class gamekeeper. A simple enough plot. Established critical opinion may cite this version as simply an inferior foundation on which Lawrence built the final, more well known text, but with 'The First Lady Chatteley' we can appreciate the story without being blinded by the (admittedly important and revolutionary) graphic depictions of sex which we find in the final version. Instead we see the gradual destruction of both a marraige (Constance's) and society's established order, through the eyes of a man who knew more than most about obstacles to personal freedom. Lawrence presents all three pivotal characters in a wholly realistic light, such that at times we even feel sympathy for the supposed villian of the peice, Clifford, the paralysed husband of the free spirited Constance. This is indicative of Lawrence's gift as a writer, and the feeling we are left with on reading the novel is one of having been a close friend of one of it's protagonists, such is the realism generated by Lawrence's prose.

If you can track it down, read this in addition to the final version, if only to see a great novel's humble, yet still compelling, beginnings.

About ten years ago I was in London and I came across this (the original) version of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The language is so crisp and the story free flowing, I was immediately taken by this "pastoral tale." The book came out in two additional versions -- John Thomas & Lady Jane and Lady Chatterley -- which almost "bolt" additional material onto the delicate frame that Lawrence originally wrote.

A must admit that I have gone back and compared these works sentence by sentence to see how a writer can almost over-write.

Stepping back I feel that the First Lady Chatterley, although shorter, perhaps is actually the best. The critics do not probably agree with me, but then again, I only need to please myself.

This novella certainly is worth a look just to see how far Lawrence carried his theme from its early inception to the "heavy" hand he laid on it in the more well known version.

Written in response to widespread condemnation of the sexuality and libertine lifestyles presented in his books, Apocalypse was the final attempt by D. H. Lawrence to make himself understood. The modern reader will probably detect a full throttle blitz against the puritanical deacons of the Church of England and his establishment tormentors. Launched from the most contentious and abstruse of the Bible's books, Revelations, Lawrence levels his antipathy at a rigid, superficially moral, life denying exposition of Christian thought. He argues that the confining nature of living the 'good' life in expectation of reward in Heaven cuts to the root of an immensely rich potential for experience and passion presented in the world. He continuously falls back on opaque codices-- of arcane civilizations that he states more fully explored the metaphysical realm. Lawrence divines a heroic age where apparent creation and destiny were seen as integral and complete. Robert Graves's 'The White Goddess' comprehensively analyzes the same mythological, magical architecture, but Lawrence uses it in a much more targeted and critical way.

Lawrence saw the aesthetic brilliance of Revelations as a bridge to a more mysterious, immediate, compelling theology. At the same time he condemns the apocalyptic churches who interpret the book as the evocation of Hell and Judgement, rather than in its potent poetic symbolism. He goes so far as to accuse John of Patmos of not presenting a revelation at all, but of appropriating a truer, more ancient historiography for eccliastical and political reasons. Not above placing his own eccentric opinions of government in this tract, he could be accused of mounting his own pulpit, if with literary distinction. His claim of an affirming devotion to the visible universe as the only 'true' route to the holy can be countered by reading some of the lively writings of Christian ascetics. This treatise, however, is not about them. It is aimed squarely at the convention seeking, socially regulating, sanctimonious attitudes that had censored and prosecuted him. Not surprisingly it did not raise his stock much among his critics, but it is an essential text in understanding the underlying motives behind his works.

Although Lawrence's writings are noted for more earthly activities, he shows a surprising knowledge of Biblical matters. In this book he analyzes the last book of the Bible-- Revelations-- and not too favorably at that. I cannot argue with his facts because I am not as familiar with them as as he is. What I find fascinating about this essay-book are his observations on democracy, and especially about life.

The last page or two contain one of his most remarkable and inspiring observations about the individual and his soul. Lawrence often argues that you cannot "save" you soul; you must "live" it. Near the end of this book he writes:

"What man most passionately want is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos....I am part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched."

The most poignant phrase in this passage is "...and ours for a short time only." Lawrence lived a shorter time that most of us will, but in his lifetime his output was as perceptive and prodigious as any author who has ever written. Scattered throughout this book are irritating but illuminating thoughts like: "But a democracy is bound in the end to be obscene, for it is composed of myriad disunited fragments, each fragment assuming to itself a false wholeness, a false individuality. Modern democracy is made up of millions of frictional parts all asserting their own wholeness."

Some people have taken that statement as proof that Lawrence is against democracy. But I consider it a valid danger for democracy, one that is being played out in the press every day. To preserve democracy, the best of all possible forms of government, we have to analyze and try to correct its failings and weaknesses.

Puzzle your way through this book. I hope you will find it as rewarding as I did.

Attacks everything blindly and madly promoted by the dominant ideas of the dominant socio-economic classes and strongest institutionalized influences in the current civilization of inauthenticity and death.

The power of money must go, according to Lawrence, as the power of the sun must return--as it indeed has always been the power of life whether we recognize it or not. Also, the power of blood must be reasserted. As human beings we are connected to all things. However, this perspective is suppressed as it constitutes a threat to the status quo.

Lawrence here sees no salvation in either democracy or western monotheism; but solely in human beings connecting up once again to the universal forces of nature from which come life's vitality.

This book was found in D.H. Lawrence's papers after his death. It has been published as it was found, which was probably incomplete. The story has some rough edges that undoubtedly would have been smoothed with more rewriting. The book raises interesting questions about what love, proper behavior, and life are all about.

The rector had a tragedy in his marriage. The woman whose virginal beauty and nature he had loved became frustrated with him, and left him with two young daughters for another man. Despite his loss of "she who was Cynthia," the rector still loves that memory. His younger daughter, Yvette, grows up to be a lot like her mother. That makes life tough for her, because her Grandmother and maiden Aunt rule the roost, and despise anything that or anyone who reminds them of "she who was Cynthia." Despite the encouragement of her more conventional older sister, Yvette is at sixes and sevens. She cannot stand her home, her family, or the young men who woo her. She feels totally bored and frustrated.

In the midst of her crisis after school ends, she notices a gypsy who seems to command and excite her at the same time. He is the only person who has ever positively moved her, and she doesn't know what to make of it. But her lack of focus keeps her from doing much about it. "She was born inside the pale. And she liked comfort, and a certain prestige." So the idea of running off with a married father of five children who lives in a caravan doesn't exactly thrill her.

The tension builds in the household as her rector father discovers she has made friends with "unsuitable" people (a couple living together prior to marriage, following the woman's divorce). Yvette cuts off her connection with them.

Probably nothing would have happened, but the gypsy returns one more time . . . and the unexpected happens. Vague thoughts must become bold action, or danger awaits!

The book's ending has many of the qualities of "The Lady or the Tiger" and you will be left to fill in the blanks of what happens next in your own mind.

The book left me feeling a little uncomfortable. The class distinctions, the hatred, the unpleasantness to one another, and the purposeless lives irritated me. I wasn't sure where Lawrence agreed with these views and where he did not. He seems to be coming down on the side of those who are "disreputable" but he is hard on them for having inappropriate qualities as well. It's almost as though Lawrence didn't like any of his characters, except perhaps the gypsy. Certainly, it is rewarding to read about complex characters who are flawed.

The book's main weakness is that the metaphors weigh a bit too heavily on the story. A little more subtlety would have made the story more appealing. For much of the book, I thought the structure stuck out too much. There is little action for most of the story, yet the character development is limited except for Yvette and her father.

Those who are used to modern novels will find all of the hinting around about sexual attraction to be a little strange. I thought that it was sort of charming in the context of a society that liked to pretend that such emotions only occurred on a limited basis within marriage.

After you enjoy the story (be sure to stick with it to the end!), I suggest that you think about where we deny emotions and attitudes that people have every day. What honesty and spontaneity are lost thereby?

Enjoy your honest emotions as well as your honest thoughts! Be kind to all you meet!

I know, I know - D. H. Lawrence is a classic twentieth century writer and it may be hard for some to find fault with him. But I can't stand the way I feel so cold whenever I read one his books. The 'Virgin and the Gipsy' is a cute little tale of a blatantly sexually deprived, well-brought up attractive girl named Yvette. She is always struggling against convention and the climax of the novel in every sense of the word is when she 'symbolically' has it off with the gypsy. It is worth reading, definitely, but don't have high expectations. It's possible to flick through it in about ten minutes because it's only 85 pages long. It is packed with symbolism, idioms, metiphors and the usual liguistic crap that comes with pretentious classics like this one. D. H. Lawerence is the porn king of twentieth century literature, but if you're hoping for explicit, rampant sex, stick with Jilly Cooper. This book is very well written and his language is so dynamic. I didn't enjoy reading it, but for anyone who has a desire to read stuff that should be read (in order to become a well-read young gentleman like myself) then yes, read it. Otherwise don't bother. Go for something with a bit more body like 'Women in Love' also by Lawrence in case you didn't know. J.P. Robinson

Having never heard of this story, picking it up and reading it really was a nice suprize and was another enlightening experience with Lawrence. He draws on the powers of the old, young, and the outcast in a story very appicable to this very day.

knowing the reputation of this novel, i was curious to find out what the fuss was about. but i found that the best thing about the novel is the description of his family, especially in the first part. his writing is simple and direct, and part one paints a very vivid picture of working-class life in england circa 1900. the other thing that surprised me about the book is the euthanasia at the end. i wasn't prepared for this and quite honestly was shocked to read about paul and his sister annie 'gliggling' and they prepare the morphium od for their mum. paul's love for his mother is also disturbing. his last kiss of the beloved cadaver is completely morbid. frankly, i'm surprised this aspect of the novel didn't cause more controversy. in comparison, the sexual material is pretty tame, granted i am 100 years removed from the book's first appearance.

the structure of the book is based naturally on the biography, but still, the story is a little shapeless. there are characters and incidents introduced that are never taken up and resolved. paul's brother arthur, for example, makes short appearances from time to time, but he doesn't figure in the story at all. you can argue this is like real life, and maybe this is what lawrence was trying to achieve, but by the standards of a traditional novel, it is sloppy.

i also never really got into the book. usually, i race to the end to find out what happened, but with 'sons and lovers', i coasted. at first, i thought this was because of the book's shapelessness, but there's no reason a biographical work of fiction can't be well structured. i realized the reason is that paul morel is just not your typical 'hero' of a biographical book. in fact, he's no hero at all. he has too many worts and he doesn't try to cover them up - i think this unlikeableness or aloofness of the main character makes the book itself unlikeable and hard to get into.

nevertheless, lawrence does write nicely and the novel has some very interesting moments. worth a read.

3 1/2 stars

Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence dwells on the quintessence elements of life. These elements include love and marriage, religion, and filial love (carnal or platonic?). Each of these elements are conveyed by the behavior and choices of each character and the consequences that result from these decisions. Sons and Lovers is considered a quasi-autobiography of Lawrence, and it is Paul's cogitations on marriage (e.g. "Nothing is as bad as marriage that's a hopeless failure" 136), religion (e.g. "God doesn't know things, He is things" 258), and his indefatigable obsession with his mother (e.g. "Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, inspite of hygenists, when it is shared with a beloved" 72) that connects the reader to the realism of Sons and Lovers. Paul, the protagonist, is despondent as a result of his indecisive gallivantings. Much of it appears to be influenced by the passive and inattentive rearing of his father--Walter Morel. Paul is the ideal character to pyschoanalyze. At one point in the book, he says "It's not religious to be religious" (257). It is about his agnosticism, or arguably his atheism. His mind is convoluted with callow perceptions of life. He is a bead left on a spectrum with open ends. Paul Morel is not a believer; he is a pseudo-transient gallivanting through life afraid of commitment. It can be concluded that Paul's filial attachment (whether carnal or platonic, you decide) to his mother is a result of an impassive father figure; his aversion to religion is a result of Miriam's devout and fervent gnawings. In the end, Paul is alone when he could very well have joined Miriam.

"She [Miriam] believed that his chief need in life was herself. If she could prove it, both to herself and to him, the rest might go; she could simply trust to the future" (236).

Like his collier father, Paul succumbs to the recursive hole that has imprisoned his father. Quandaries can be resolved, but Paul has no lexicon (figuratively speaking) of his own. With the death of his mother, he is left spiritually unclad, depraved, and in dire need of the love that he once relished from his mother. When Paul walks away in the end, there was an oddly lackadaisical inflection to his disposition, and the void was apparent. Here's a final quote from the book that speaks for itself.

"There's always a kind of intensity. When you laugh I could always cry; it seems as if it shows up your suffering. Oh, you make me knit the brows of my very soul and cogitate" (195).

Note: The page number reference "Everyman's Library" Hardcopy edition. I couldn't find this edition in Amazon.

This is really a book of psychological analysis. It's not exactly an autobiography but Lawrence makes a good deal self-eveluation of his childhood.When you read the novel you feel in an instant that someone who can describe human conditions that successfully,must have lived it all himself.Paul's excessive attachment to his mother and how his life became unbearable after her death shows the human helplessness.He tries over and over to LOVE someone other than his mother but each time he finds some missing part which is fullfilled by his mother. He really loves Miriam but somehow love also falls short to live happily-ever-after. When I first started the book I felt that the main character was Mrs.Morel. I was mistaken. Lawrence used all of the characters with nearly equal emphasis.Of course the leading one is Paul. On the other hand you take lots of things from other characters by his clear depiction. Paul,thus Lawrence, is a good psychologist.If you like to find your own thougts and feelings told by an author you should read Sons And Lovers.I finished it in a week.

I have just finished reading this book and to be honest I found it quite tough going. Recommended to me by an academic of Lawrence's work, he had to concede afterwards that perhaps it wasn't the ideal introduction to a new reader. What this story lacks mostly is a good old fashioned yarn, but instead seems to be a vehicle for the author to convey many of his thoughts on relationships between men and men, men and women and politics in general.

I can't be too specific on the authors ideas as I freely admit that much of this went "in one ear and out the other" as I frequently found after reading certain paragraphs I was left thinking "I have no idea what he was just talking about". Concentration therefore was fundamental to enjoying this book, and on the few occasions when I was truely focussed and emmersed, some of the ideas were interesting and rewarding.

This is a semi autobiographical account of Lawrence's own experiences in Australia, but strangly I found the most interesting part of the book was the "Nightmare" chapter, dedicated to the character's account of being in England during World War One. This too, mirrors the authors own experiences during this turbulent time.

Maybe I should go for the better known novels next time...

Tnis was the book that made me realize just how clever Lawrence was. His spiritual and analytical insight into the nature of a bastardized and inconquerable continent is just breathtaking, and it truly is a work of a supremely sensitive and perceptive individual.

Lawrence explores such depths that there are sometimes sinister truths and realizations that erupts from Lawrences mind, in the guise of the main character. This is a haunting and sad book, that pulls your mind completely into the wonder of Lawrences intellectual capacity and genius for seeing the imperciptible, where so many fail to. I love you Lorenzo, thank goodness for your genius.

I successively declare each Lawrence novel I encounter to be the best I've read, but in my opinion, "The Rainbow" is especially brilliant in its painstaking and accurate depiction of the universal experience of adolescence...and especially noteworthy in its spot-on description of the evolving feelings and thoughts of adolescent girls. Lawrence's feeling for and understanding of his female characters is astounding, particularly when compared with that of other writers of his time.

This work is sometimes criticized because of "repetitiveness" in the writing, but I find the repeated phrases add to, not detract from, the power of the novel. As in Lady Chatterley, he also manages to work in many brilliant and cutting observations of the price of progress in an industrial society, and document in careful, keen-eyed accuracy the varying responses of his characters--and, through them, archetypal human responses--to that society.

Make no mistake: I would not have read this book unless I was compelled by, say, a teacher. And compelled I was. After finishing it, I think it's a great book and I'm glad that I read it, but paradoxically, I don't think I would do it again.

The only way to describe "The Rainbow" is that it would be more of a masterpiece if you didn't have to read it. If there was somehow a method in which you could absorb this book without cutting through Lawrence's prose, this would be undoubtingly be one of the greatest books ever [not] written.

Unfortunately this is impossible, because the style is inextricably connected with the thematics and direction of the book as a whole. So we as the reader must deal with the prose, because the text is as close as the reader will ever get to the novel, although I think that one of Lawrence's central themes is that the text cannot itself represent life. Hence you have text that attempts to depict life, text that knows implicitly that it will fail at this task, yet text that will try as hard as it can to draw out this picture of three generations of a family.

In class we listed a few adjectives that would describe Lawrence's style for "The Rainbow":

+Repetitive
+Lyrical
+Oppositional
+Fecund
+Slow-motion
+Translated
+Intense

...and the list goes on. If you are very patient and can deal with the text beyond the text, so to speak, you will like this book. If you are like me, you will not like this book, but you will be glad that you read it.

Lawrence's fame (or notoriety) rests on his sexual frankness, but what a lot of readers overlook is how well he wrote about parent-child relationships and family dynamics. The beginning of this novel is absolutely brilliant: Tom Brangwen and the Polish widow marry in haste, then find that they still haven't worked out their relationship. Her young daughter is an uneasy third party, and the child's sensitivity to the unease in their household is beautifully described, as well as her stepfather's gentle efforts to befriend her. As Lawrence continues the family history, his usual obsessions surface. But in general, it's a good story: sex is an organic part of his characters' lives rather than the mainspring of the whole plot (as in some of his other novels). And the characters come across as multi-dimensional human beings rather than talking heads (or other organs) for Lawrence's comments on life. A good novel for people who "don't like D.H. Lawrence."