Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the hype
Review: I suggested Sons and Lovers for our book club because it was on three respected "Top 100" book lists. We often read classics, so the club eagerly voted to include Sons and Lovers on our reading list.
We all finished the book; but much to our surprise, we were unanimously disappointed. On a scale of 1 to 10, one person gave it a negative four. Ouch!
The first 150 pages of the book are about Paul Morrell's youth and family life in a small coalmining town. This section is lively, interesting, vivid, and enjoyable. The second section of the book (the remaining 400 pages) is a study of Paul's obsession, frustration, and indecision about the women in his life. Reading it is like watching someone at a restaurant become very angry and emotional because he cannot make up his mind what to order; it is both boring and frustrating. Paul's constant vacillation between loving Miriam and then hating her (often both in the same sentence) eventually becomes laughable to the point of inviting parody.
My book club agreed the book had potential, but the second section really lacked momentum. Paul's obsessions and indecision simply became boring.
To his credit, Lawrence's prose is smooth, direct, and immediate. He is very much of the Modern tradition. The first section of the book was superb. I am certain I would have enjoyed the book much more if the second section were perhaps 100 pages shorter. I liked parts of Sons and Lovers enough that I'll try Lawrence again someday. But I can't really say I recommend this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Sons and Mothers
Review: This is probably the most autobiographical of Lawrence's novels, dealing with the childhood, adolescence and early adulthood of the author. It is a brutally frank portrayal of the relationship betweem a domineering mother and the younger (and surviving) son, a relationship that colors every aspect of the protagonist's life, from his relationship with his father to his romantic relationships with two very different women. Lawrence paints this portrait with very fine brush strokes: an attention to descriptive detail and some of the best characterization in modern English literature. Although the reader might not like the characters in the novel, there is no doubt that these are real people - especially the mother, Mrs. Morel. The setting of the novel is the coal fields of Nottingham and Lawrence carries on the work begun by Thomas Hardy in writing of the English working class with realism and detachment, eschewing the English literary tendency to moralize and to judge.
When Lawrence began the novel he had only passing knowledge of the theories of Freud regarding the mother-son relationship that became the backbone of the psychologist's Oedipus Complex. Essentially the author was writing from experience: the psychic bond between Mrs. Morel and her son, Paul, was very similar to the bond shared by Lawrence and his mother. This bond between son and mother amounts almost to a husband and wife sort of love - without the sex - and prevents the son from ever achieving a fully satisfactory relationship with another woman because of the hold the mother has on the son's soul. It is not until the mother is dead that the son is able to begin to free himself from her hold. The novel, then, is the story of that struggle.
I have never been a great fan of Lawrence's literary style, finding it a bit too jerky and over edited - a criticism I find with this novel. True, there are passages of poetic beauty (especially some of the descriptions of the Nottinghamshire countryside) but I found the prose a bit too tedious and lacking spontaneity. This is probably Lawrence's best novel (far superior to the more popular Lady Chatterley's Lover) and the one on which his reputation is firmly based; also, a novel that should be read by every mother and every son.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as Smutty as I Expected
Review: The man is an absolute master at relationships. I have not read any other writer that has his patience and skill at building complex, realistic relationships through the accumulation of minute detail. While the characters and plot are only adequate, the relationships between the characters, and the poetic prose, drove the novel and managed to keep me engaged the whole way through. I was surprised that this novel, at least, showed no indication of the smuttiness of which Lawrence has often been accused. Overall, a good introduction to a literary author who will get another look later.
Rating:
Summary: Aglimpse into Walter Morel's character
Review: I offered this book at my form 6.Now as a reader and a teacher of sons and lovers, I have discovered where its novelity lies.
It is not an exciting book yet it is full of realism and the reality of its themes is what propelles one to read every single page of it.
There is however a likely misconcept to develop in the reader, towards Walter Morel's character.He is painted as brutal but if we ask ourselves why a sensous,jolly man Getrude meets at a christmas party grows into a violet husband he is only after a year of marriage,We will honestly attribute his infamous character to his wife.The treatment he suffers at the hands of his own sons is not also encouraging.
Rating:
Summary: A very, very good novel
Review: I read this a long time ago and hated it with a passion. I was chuckling reading the one-star reviews here, because had the Internet been around when I first read this book, I would have given it a scathing, one-star review.
The first time around, I was bored to tears, and it took me forever to finish. This time, I was so moved by certain sections my tears were falling on the page, and it took me only a week (or maybe it was six days) to finish. And though I will never call this my favorite classic, I liked it so much that currently I am reading Lawrence's "The Rainbow."
Make sure you get an edition that helps explain the dialect. After a while, I was able to figure it out myself, and that was kind of fun -- almost like learning a new language.
Rating:
Summary: Choose your own prison
Review: The main character in his many bouts with love, combatted by his intense lust for individualism and desire to be a world unto himself, could not overcome himself and therefore, with a conquistador's view of love, failed miserably at love's aquisition. He could not however create himself as an all emcompassing world, he search for satisfaction, and his realization that he could only love himself consequently chained him to himself.
This book made me think more than most, but neglected to make me feel. Dostoevski is a poor writer, but suceeds in making one 'feel' rather intensely, like Hemmingway said. However, Lawrence, though a bit tedious and repetitive at times, makes you almost one with the character in their intellectual battle with themself, but not in their battle with emotions. I felt detached from Paul's emotions. I felt detached from his mother's, even though she was her emotions. Lawrence writes a great deal better than most of his contemporaries, and its a wretched pity that he still could not synthesize thought and emotion like only a few have done.
Rating: 
Summary: You've never tried
Review: I hated this book. It's not the writing that's in question. Although what Lawrence describes is formidably bleak, nevertheless he describes it well - even the minor warmths that sustain the people. And it's not that he is not perceptive either - there were moments when he could have been writing my story, used exactly the same words I did to describe the same feelings.
It was the characters I didn't like at all, especially Paul Morel (moral?). In the first half of the novel we learn a lot about his mother - in fact for a long time I thought the novel was about her. In the second half of the novel the story moves to her third child Paul (the second, Annie, is minor; the last, Arthur, almost trivial) and his 'loves' for Miriam and Clara. Miriam is pure and initially Paul leaves her that way, only activating the relationship later when Clara tells him he had never really tried with her. But once the relationship is sexual Paul retreats. Clara, the alternative woman, is separated from her husband and Paul experiences real passion in winning her over, but she too is unsatisfying to him. Is it his mother's love for him, and his love for her that is to blame? But who are these two women who we have little knowledge of to give us a foundation of understanding of their behaviour as we do of Paul and his mother?
What really distressed me was the selfishness of Paul - one of his last acts in the novel - with his sister Annie - is truly appalling (it's not sexual). So what is Lawrence's reason for drafting the novel as he did. Many people experience disturbances to their sexual awakenings, but I would like to think that outcomes do not necessarily have to be as bleak as Lawrence portrays. This is a novel - it doesn't have to faithfully represent people's awful experiences. By doing so for his characters I can't help feel that Lawrence is fatalistic - if things go wrong for you, bad luck, you'll end up a derelict and there is no help for it. I cannot accept this.
The most moving parts of the novel both involve Paul's mother - related to the death of her eldest child William and her own death.
Other recommendations:
Wedekind: Springtime Awakening
Turgenev: Spring Torrents
Rating:
Summary: yawn . . .
Review: --Oh! Pardon me for that rather undignified opening. Although (yawn) when I get to reflecting back on this book it seems somehow an appropriate response. It is a book about selfish and spoiled people, about elitists imagining their ideas as somehow relevent to the larger world around them and about how a little bit of education can lead to a great deal of contempt for the society in which someone is raised.Now, of course, these are valid and even potentially interesting points, but the method Lawrence chose to tell this, what I gather is a deeply personal story, is basically condescention and self-absorbsion. After about 100 pages I started dreading what was to come, which was basically more of the same alongside some predictable, tacked on melodramatic tragedy. The complication comes from Lawrence's genuine ability as a writer. There are lines--sometimes, albiet rarely, pages of pure beauty. These words came from a powerful and passionate writer who was too personally involved with the story he was telling to make it universial. I can appreciate the venting, the often conflicted outrage of the elitist scholar and budding psychoanalyist that Lawrence was later to become, but if this is a modelled story of the man's life it will ultimately take away some of the respect my reading of The Rainbow, Women in Love and a handful of his short stories had previously inspired. I can forgive the late, great author for this childish and selfish book, a mama's boy trying as hard as he can to show off how clever people have always told him he was, but I have trouble comprehending the innumerable critics and casual readers alike who boast and gloat over this story as if the triumph of personal arrogance related within somehow validated their own wavering sense of intellectual accomplishment. Two and a half stars rounded up because of some pretty writing and the apparent lasting relevence of this mostly frivilous work--
Rating:
Summary: Sons and Lovers
Review: This work by D.H. Lawrence was rated number 9 on the top 100 list, and I think it's a fair rating. Sons and Lovers is a beautifully written and intricately drawn story of a young man. This actually serves as a pseudo autobiography as it mirrors DHL's life rather closely. There is a quality to this work that you do not find in contemporary novels. The characters are developed to an incredible depth and with great skill and precision. You find after reading this book that you feel you know some of the characters better than your neighbors. This is not a book about action or drama, it is about life. The focus here is not on the storyline, but on the people involved in it. As opposed to today's authors, Lawrence uses the storyline to define the character and personality of the participants. I think this book is so well written that it can make you look at your own friends and family and understand how little you really know of them. Many scholars talk about the idea of Lawrence introducing the Oedipal complex, but it's not really what this book is all about. While that psychiatrical phenomenon is a component of this work, the defining quality of this work is really about Lawrence's ability to capture the people in his story as eloquently and with such detail as he has. If you can appreciate good literature, this book is a must read for you.
Rating:
Summary: Husbands and Mama's Boys
Review: This story of the Morel family begins with a dramatic portrayal of the effect industrialization has on human lives. Mr. Morel, a coal miner in turn-of-the-century Britain, lives a life of drudgery, anger and desperation. He takes his frustrations out on his wife Gertrude, while the real source of his unhappiness is his own low self-esteem. Gertrude is embittered by his hardness and so looks to her sons to fill all her emotional needs. This constitutes Part One of the novel, which to this reviewer's taste is the more satisfying section. The detailed descriptions of the arguments and even outright fights between the married couple are as powerful as anything in fiction, and bleakly dramatize how poverty can destroy the very hearts and souls of the working classes. Morel is oppressed by his employer, so he in turn oppresses his wife, who emotionally smothers her sons. Fight the power! All of which is what makes Part Two such a disappointment. The entire second half of the book revolves around the second son, Paul, and how his closeness to his mother makes it impossible for him to engage in satisfactory relationships with other women. Miriam, the milquetoast who yearns for a transcendent, spiritual love, cares for Paul so much that she lets him walk all over her. The much tougher and independent Clara introduces Paul to a more physically satisfying relationship, but neither of them has any real attachment to the other. The weakness of this second half is not just that it all seems to take far too long; it's that over time, the characters become very unsympathetic. None of them have the strength of will to break away from their failing relationships, despite the fact that these failures cast dark shadows across their lives. And there's certainly nothing tragic about these young people mooning about, complaining that their relationships aren't what they'd like them to be; most especially in the context of Part One, which reminds us that there are people in this world who are really suffering. Readers who are deeply interested in the internal subtleties of male-female relationships (and this probably includes a majority of young women) will love this book. If the two parts were published separately, this reviewer would unhesitatingly give Part One five stars, while grudgingly giving Part Two three and a half. For Mama's boys (and those who've seriously dated them) this book certainly rates five stars, but others will find these characters so annoying that even four stars may seem generous.
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