Book Review – D H Lawrence – Sons And Lovers

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Spoiler alerts – Penguin Classics – 1925 Lawrence’s most autobiographical novel, the sad and moving story of a boy so attached to his ailing mother that he is unable to detach himself from her to establish a relationship with either of two women who he has an opportunity to marry. Paul Morel is the older of two sons of a drunken Derbyshire Miner and a domineering, doting mother. When the younger son dies, Paul is bonded to his mum through grief and caves in to her desire to push him away from following his father down the pits (literally and metaphorically). In many ways, the father is the most interesting figure, frightened by a wife who is smarter than he is, and children who inherit her intellect. His stories of feeling most at peace in the bowels of the Earth and genuine passion for the sense of burial there are remarkable. Paul however, on the brink of deciding between the two girls who compete for his love, (even though one is already in a destructive relationship) decides to reject them both as his ailing Mother dies leaving him and his father facing a bleak uncertain future alone. Beautifully written with totally believable characters – a precurser to the kitchen sink realism of the angry 1960’s – way ahead of its time. Arthur Chappell