Sons and Lovers (Oxford World's Classics)

Lawrence, D. H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199538883 ISBN 13: 9780199538881

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2009

Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly-knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long.

When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives. Their second son, Paul, craves the warmth of family and community, but knows that he must sacrifice everything in the struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents' failure.

Lawrence's powerful description of Paul's single-minded efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally through relationships with two women - the innocent, old-fashioned Miriam Leivers and the experienced, provocatively modern Clara Dawes - makes this a novel as much for the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was for the beginning of the twentieth.
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Review:

"He's an intoxicator, a very great writer, punished by the feminists and their ludicrous opinions. The short stories are among the best in the language. I re-read Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow recently and thought them wonderful... Has there ever been anyone like him for bringing places and people so vividly to life?" (Doris Lessing)

"Lawrence's masterly portraiture of the human impulse in his fiction had strength and depth...He tore at the rock of life with hand and implement... in Sons and Lovers he fashioned the hard substance of his place and people in memorable ways." (Guardian, March 1930)

"An affecting portrait of a mining family torn apart by class divisions and individual desire at the turn of the century" (Guardian)

"His fierce love for his mother warring with the need to follow his own desires - analysed with a vigorous relentlessness and pungent imagery - makes this a work whose power stands the test of time" (Sunday Times)

"When I was 13 or 14 this was the book I couldn't put down. It's very good teenager territory" (Jonathan Pryce Daily Express)

Book Description:

A story of love, passion and family from the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover