Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Rating 8 out of 10

A masterpiece!

Vauw! This is a great book! It tells the story about the gradual emergence of an artist in a rural coal miner community in England. D. H. Lawrence is all about nature and love. He depicts the coming and going of the different seasons in a simple but quite moving way. The main character Paul Morel is a romantic. He develops a very close relationship to his mother, but the relationship to his father becomes almost non existent. It's kind of scary to read that this buddening artist simply less and less find any point of reference with his coal miner father, who is just an ordinary hardworking bloke. There is a definite loneliness sorrounding Paul Morrel in his dealings with his peers. Although he spends time with them, he is always moving on and they are left alone behind. They simply don't match him. Paul Morrel has the ability to manipulate most of the people he meet, there is a touch of something cruel and human experiment about his dealings with people. He exerts a strong influence on people, but it's like he is seeing it from above. He is to some extent shaping other peoples destinies, but sometimes with no real concern for the consequences which they eventually will suffer. Sometimes his manipulations assumes a comical air, for example he starts a relationship with a married woman Clara, her husband Baxter hates Paul, but Paul latter seeks out Baxter and becomes his good friend. One gets the sense that Pauls friendship with Baxter is bound more on a kind of morbid curiosity than true affinity. Later Paul looses interest in Clara, he then manages to reunite wife and husband again and then he disappears. D. H. Lawrence's characters are skillfully modeled and very trustworthy. He has a stunning ability to x-ray his characters attitudes to each other and also their attitudes to important aspects of life, like love, death, etc. A thread during the whole novel is Paul Morrel's relationship to his mother, this relationship is a spine in Pauls life. The death of the mother in the end of the novel is a crucial turning point. It's quite moving how D. H. Lawrence desribes Paul Morrels perception of the world after the death of his mother, he experience an absolute implosion of all meaning. He sees the first snowdrops appear in early spring, but he simply don't see any point in them being there. He sees the trams run around in the city, but he can't understand why they take the trouble to move. When he talk with his friends, he is responding to their words, but in reality he is far away and their words just appear to him like strange sounds.