Phew. Finally finished.
It's a tough one to get through. A lot of profound, accurate theses throughout, but what the book is about and how it is strung together is a bit above my head. ( )

D.H. Lawrence's novel about the hopelessness of attaining ideal love. I imagine him inspired by arguments with Frieda Weekley that match the scene of the twenty-third chapter, 'Excurse' - in which Ursula and Birkin have their petty fight that is brilliant for its verisimilitude - and feeling that love is really only a hopeless joyride of emotional pinnacles alternating with illogical battles, so let's write a novel about that.

Unfortunately that chapter features all the verisimilitude I could find, and the only part I felt he got right. I can't relate to Lawrence's way of thinking, or his characters' way of thinking, whichever it may be. These thoughts and conversations do not seem realistic to me. The characters are oppressed by everything that matters - beauty, love, knowledge, family, society, each other. The only thing they let stand is their questing after an undefined "truth" and wrestling with whatever that means. I'd only read "Sons and Lovers" prior, many years ago, and came here to give Lawrence a second chance. This is supposed to be his best work. Why then, the amateur mistake of diving headfirst into philosophical arguments among characters I haven't yet gotten to know well enough to bother my head about what they're arguing about? Yet it is only through their (tedious) arguing that I was able to compose their respective characters. It took me a hundred pages just to begin understanding the five leads and their differences.

Birkin is unsure what he believes in, he only knows he doesn't like the world as it presents itself. He wants ultimate truth and purity, something that lies beyond everyday emotions, but he can't define it to his or anyone else's satisfaction. His love match Ursula is more traditional, believing in the power of love that conquers all and as an end in itself. Her competitor Hermione is the most self-centered, viewing the world as a structure built around herself to which all must align or be brought into alignment by her will. Ursula's sister Gudrun is sensitive to the drawbacks of being a woman, desirous of freedom, jealous of men's power. Her love interest Gerald views the world as an industrialist might, to be used at his pleasure, but having accomplished that he finds himself at a loss. He also appears to be wrestling with his homosexuality, which he is unable to recognize or assert. None of these characters succeed at finding full satisfaction in love, or are able to fully equate the word 'love' with the concept their hearts yearn for.

All well and good. But then, as they act this out, some absurd emotional twist happens, like Ursula's sudden descent into ruminations on death and inexplicable hatred for Birkin out of nowhere, and I think I just don't understand what Lawrence is doing at all. He wants to splash a dose of realism over the picture of romantic love, fine; but does realism have to mean irrationalism? Or is he saying women are just plain irrational and that's the whole problem? Because only a couple of chapters later, for no reason (again) Ursula has done another flip: "he had lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world." No hate, no nothing. Another chapter: now he's off to France without her, so now she's going to die without him. Oh, please. Is this the best and most convincing way to demonstrate the flaws of 'ideal love' through narrative? And it isn't just the women. The men don't exhibit these sudden twists but get caught up in their determined desires for something beyond the immediacy of what love has to offer, and obsess over it. I might buy Lawrence's hypothesis, but these 'proofs' are useless. There's no realism in this realism.

Then there's the irritating language he uses. He's reluctant to portray the act of falling in love, preferring to it the idea of placing others under one's power. I've never known an author to so generously use the word "loins". Everything between your waist and your knees is your loins, according to Lawrence. Perhaps that's as daring as he could manage prior to Lady Chatterley? And the dialogue tags that grate on my nerves, with people crying out, jeering and retorting all over the place. Nope, can't do Lawrence anymore. ( )

Stupid book. There's a scene near the end where Lawrence essentially circle-jerks his own writing (by proxy of Birkin's letter).

Lawrence tends to express his philosophies and thoughts on obscure topics through the dialog with the characters. I suppose he thought this was going to make the reader ponder on the concept of death and love but personally all I saw was the ramblings of a wannabe philosopher... ( )

This novel explores the lives and loves of the Brangwen sisters as introduced in the previous work The Rainbow. (You don't have to read The Rainbow first.) This is an exquisitely written story that questions and examines the roles men and women play in their lives and with each other. The wider societal expectations are also addressed. Scholars say Lawrence was trying to show the ill effects of industrialization on the psyche, but for my early 20's mind it was simply a drama-filled story about complicated people and relationships. It totally turned me on to Modernist literature. ( )

This is the sort of book where nobody talks about the weather, or the headlines, or the latest scandal. Instead, all conversations have deep and portentous Symbolic Intent. This is the sort of book where characters will frequently lapse into silence as they look to the horizon and feel oppressed by the subtle machinations of society.

Judging from this book, Lawrence's three favorite words are "abstract," "voluptuous," and "loins." ( )