Rating: 
Summary: Not a masterpiece
Review: I have read others of Lawrence's books and thoroughly enjoyed them, but this one bored me to tears. It was not only repetitive, but unnecessarily florid, slow, and melodramatic. Here is a sample:"Gradually she realised that her life, her freedom, was sinking under the silent grip of his physical will. He wanted her in his power. He wanted to devour her at leisure, to have her. At length she realised that her sleep was a long ache and a weariness and exhaustion, because of his will fastened upon her, as he lay there beside her, during the night. She realised it all, and there came a momentous pause, a pause in her swift running, a moment's suspension in her life, when she was lost." And it goes on and on and on like this, unto the third generation. No doubt all this purple prose was extremely erotic in its day, but none of these characters seem at all real to me, and there is no plot to make up for the lack. For me, this was one big waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Would get an oscar in cinematography
Review: I know thats a weird title to give a review, but that is always how I felt about this book. His beautiful, descriptive tone in this novel really makes you feel more like you are watching a movie, rather than reading a novel. It's a great story too and has always been one of my favorites. Very Hardy-esque.
Rating: 
Summary: Viscerally beautiful
Review: I loved this book when I first read it years ago, and, having just read it again, it has gotten better. Truly great books improve with age. What struck me this time is the juxtaposition of raw muscularity and florid poetry. Those who want to read a microcosm of Lawrence should try his novella "The Fox," which encapsulizes Lawrence's recurrent theme of a thoughtful woman repeately struck by the waxing and waning of primordial passions. A good combination might be to read a Lawrence work with Yeats's "Leda and the Swan." D.H. Lawence hurls body punches to the soul like a heavyweight boxer. This may be a sexist metaphor, but it conjures the power of his prose poetry.
Rating:
Summary: Lawrence: the man who knew women
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Lawrence: the man who knew women
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't get into this
Review: It is a rare book indeed that I can't make it through. There are some books that I start and put down, but mostly for reasons of disinterest or poor workmanship. _The Rainbow_ suffered from neither of these. Instead, I simply could not put up with the seemingly endless vacillations of the characters, the souped-up description of all that they thought, and the plodding storyline. All these things are Lawrence's style, and it is a style that I just couldn't stand. In some ways, this did not surprise me. I've never been that fond of description. I favor dialogue, then plot. A book in which action and character are made manifest through dialogue usually ends up as a favorite of mine; books with lengthy ruminations on the beauty of the landscape, in which the author tries to be both poet and storyteller, annoy me. I don't dislike characters that have trouble making up their minds--such is life. I do dislike novels in which that is the only point of the book. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I'm not mature enough for this book. Maybe in ten years, or twenty years, or more, time I will come upon Lawrence again and my viewpoint will have radically shifted. These comments here, then, stand as a benchmark for that future date, to remind me of how absolutely dreadful I thought this book was.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite D.H. Lawrence
Review: 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."
Rating:
Summary: This Book Will Destroy Your Mind
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging
Review: Not as moving as some of my favorite books, but this was an engaging look into three generations of the Brangwen family in small-town England. Interesting portrayal of the roles and rights off women in each generations and the repercussions of changing standards.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging
Review: Not as moving as some of my favorite books, but this was an engaging look into three generations of the Brangwen family in small-town England. Interesting portrayal of the roles and rights off women in each generations and the repercussions of changing standards.
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