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: 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: 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: 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: unsatifying
Review: I read this book for my English class and I found it to be ultimately unsatifying. I think Lawrence's prose is incredible but I just could not empathize with Paul Morel - he''s so childish and weak. Paul is only charming during his love scenes with Clara when he affects the Welsh accent of Walter Morel. I thought Gertrude Morel was a despicable woman who treated her husband with undeserved contempt and emotionally suffocated her sons. In the book, Gertrude's death leaves Paul in a world of darkness, he's a broken man. However, it's interesting to note that as much as D.H.Lawrence (the book is semi-autobiographical) came to view his mother as a negative influence in his mature years. As an adult, it is D.H. Lawrence's father who is personified as Walter Morel, for whom he exhibited admiration.
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 Lovers
Review: Sons and Lovers is a story of how a complicated relationship between Mother and son affect relations with the son's lover. Sons and Lovers is written with more passion that other Lawrence works, probably because Lawrence's own life so closely mirrors that of the characters in this novel. The plot revolves around Paul Morel and his family. The Father is a coal miner whose bruttish behavior makes Paul detest him. Paul's Mother, full of contempt for her husband, pours all of her love toward her children, particularly the two eldest males. As Paul matures his attempts at a relationship with a lover are hindered by these complications. Paul, like his older brother William, finds that his choice of lover can never be accepted by his Mother.
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: 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.
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