D. H. Lawrence - Women in Love III

"I HATE D.H. LAWRENCE. Do you hear me world?! I read Women in Love and I am here to tell you all that it SUCKED."


"Gudrus falls in LERVE in the space of a page in naturally the most high falutin manner (this isnt' a quote I'm just gonna fake it), 'COuld it be that lad and I share a bit of arctic illumination that only reflects on our two souls? our two hearts and minds?' or words to that effect.

SORRY THIS IS UNREADABLE."


"This book totally traumatized me. The people who tried to censor it 80 years ago were right. Nobody should ever be forced to endure the torture of going through this book. It was so uneventful and boring; the conversations that occurred were also completely arbitrary and all conveniently led to some sort of philosophical topic. DON'T READ THIS BOOK!!!"


"Sodding crappy book. At least three quarters of it are BADLY WRITTEN BADLY OBSERVED BADLY IMAGINED BOLLOCKS. BOLLOCKS, I tells ya."


"I had just started the 'humanities' requirement for my degree program and was assigned this book to read for a literature course. I did not expect, from the title, that it would be a book for a Christian, but I believe in respecting authority, so I tried to read the book. But I was not able to finish it. It was so dark and full of all kinds of morbid things, that were almost as bad as the pornography. It had no redeeming feature. I felt ashamed while I was reading it, and it was so bad that even the places which were all right seemed suspicious. I thought, how will he find something weird and ugly here? This book was written back when England was full of labor unrest and socialism and paganism and what they called 'free love' so I suppose this had something to do with it.
Some of the Christians in my class wanted to complain to the Dean about a hostile study environment for Christians, but we were afraid of retribution by secular humanists."


"Have I mentioned that I hate D.H. Lawrence? I kind of want to go back in time and STAB HIM IN THE FACE."


"The professor assigned us D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and I hated it more than anything I’d ever read. Every page was an ordeal, and it was not a short book. I was absolutely miserable over it, because I’d go to class three days a week and spend an hour listening to my classmates discuss and dissect it intelligently and with enthusiasm, and all I could think was, 'What is the matter with me? I hate this book. D.H. Lawrence is a TITAN OF ENGLISH LITERATURE and I’m supposed to be impressed and engaged but I just think it sucks.' There must be something wrong with me, because no intelligent person thinks that D.H. Lawrence sucks, or that James Joyce is inscrutable, or that Henry James needed to learn how to put a sentence out of its misery. No way. These guys wrote Amazing Examples of the Divine Heights Man Can Reach With the Written Word and if you hate their work, then you are defective and have no business studying it, and good day to you."

D. H. Lawrence - Women in Love II

"Never before have I quit on a 500 page book with 30 pages left to go. Reading this book requires a lot of caffeine plus german-English and French-English dictionaries. Don't bother."


"I've outgrown thinking this hard."


"They harped on a lot about what things 'mean': what does love 'mean'? Sometimes I really felt like screaming 'stop over-analyzing everything!' - really frustrated me - not an easy read."


"the most difficult book i've ever read by far."


"too dense"

I'M SORRY THAT YOU'RE TOO DENSE


"Full of talk to hear himself talk, which they now call a 'modern' style."


"In terms of graphic erotica, there is none, today's books can offer much more detail"


"Lawrence is an amazing period piece, just because he's one of the few writers ever to take Freud's theories as deep, meaningful truth."


"I can't see the point of DH Lawrence in this day and age and there will be no more forays into re-reading this dated stuff for me. Somethings do not stand the test of time."


"Sure, the author does use the English language brilliantly. But perhaps too brilliantly"


"Oh one thing I really thought was dumb was when the bridal arrives at the church, 'They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining.' ?! Not cause they're gathered together to join in holy matrimony this couple etc etc? No, because the sun was shining. This just strikes me as amazingly sort of DUMB lol."


"Somewhere in the middle of the book one of the sisters exclaimed, 'it is amazingly cool!' I have to say that very modern-sounding phrase really stood out in the middle of all those big words of his."


"Beyond all the other problems of this novel is its flawed premise. Lawrence seems to be saying that the only way modern man can ever escape the world he lives in is to be so passionate as to overcome it. In this, Lawrence seems to be the opposite of a Buddhist."


"I worried that my lack of appreciation for this classic must be due to my inferior intellect and that I must after all be just some obtuse hill-billy. Thankfully I found that several people who had offered their reviews here shared my opinions for this book and I was quite relieved that I was not alone in my reaction."

D. H. Lawrence - Women in Love

"It's a classic, so I'm supposed to like it right? LOL"


"A wordy mess once again! Woe to me! why do I keep reading his little known novels?"


"Do not touch this travesty of a book with a barge pole! What a load of twaddle! A few sexual scenes, but even they were dull as dishwater."


"Holy crap what a miserable book. If your Emo or wannabe Emo this is the book for you. You hear people complain that Tolkien will write about a tree for 3 pages, well in this book the author will describe the same thought for 3 pages and then goes absolutely no where with it! My wife explained it best. There is no one in this book to root for ... the author is obviously trying to make you think about sacrifice and love but ended up making me feel drained and delusional."


"Lawrence failed to realise as none of his 'observations' were particularly insightful either. Maybe they would have been at the time but it certainly didn't strike a cord with me, I found it all very boring and predictable."


"I bet D.H. Lawrence was a lot of fun at parties.

Ha ha! I am kidding, of course."


"D.H. has a lot to teach us about love, and better love, and what lies beyond love, and there's a guy named Mary Sue Birkin who's a lot like D.H. and is the way we all should be."


"I was not expecting much from Women in Love. But what I discovered is something entirely different, and probably something that Lawrence did not intend. Humor."


"With Women in Love, Lawrence has built an entire novel around the celebration of maleness and male physicality ... It contains what might be the most graphic descriptions of the male body – as in 'glistening, muscular thighs' – outside of romance novels with Fabio on the cover. It’s RIDICULOUS.
...
'How perfect and foreign he was—ah how dangerous! Her soul thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, forbidden apple, this face of a man. She kissed him, putting her fingers over his face, his eyes, his nostrils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gather him in by touch. He was so firm, and shapely, with such satisfying, inconceivable shapeliness, strange, yet unutterably clear. He was such an unutterable enemy, yet glistening with uncanny white fire. She wanted to touch him and touch him and touch him, till she had him all in her hands, till she had strained him into her knowledge. Ah, if she could have the precious KNOWLEDGE of him, she would be filled, and nothing could deprive her of this.'
Seriously – that text is from a novel that is considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature. Seriously."


"My main problem with this book is that I think the dialogues aren't up to standard: there is hardly any difference between a 'male' and 'female' dialogue which has the effect that both women and men sound exactly the same ... As for the narrative, it strikes me as if an amateur has written this."