Sons & Lovers - D. H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence has been on my to-read list for a little while. A friend enjoyed some of his works and I have a high regard for her taste in books (only because it usually matches my own, ha).

Maybe I need to read something else by him before I form my final opinion, because based only on this novel I would say - BLAH. Although I enjoyed the first half of the book, the second part was just so tedious. Maybe that was the point, but it doesn't make for very compelling reading.

The story follows a working-class British family in the early 20th century, and the first half centers on the mother. She has three sons and one daughter, and a somewhat disappointing husband. Oddly, only two of the sons seem to interest her (or the narrator), and the other son and the daughter were not much part of the plot - they're disposed of rather neatly by marriage. Still, her life since her marriage and as the children grew up was a new and therefore interesting subject to me - most of the British fiction I had read either concerned the desperately poor, as in Dickens, or the fairly well off, as in Austen.

The second half of the book pushes the mother into the background as one of the sons, Paul, takes center stage, but that's where things got so boring for me. I think what started to truly get on my nerves was the frequent statement that Paul "hated" his girlfriends or mother for this or that. He hates them for loving him, he hates them for not being what he wants, he hates them for making him feel certain ways. If he's not hating them outright, he's "almost hating" them for the same reasons. I think a thesaurus would have come in handy at the writing of this book.

So Paul can't seem to resolve any of his relationships. He is certainly prevented from marrying either of his girlfriends by the presence of his mother - while she approves of one, but not the other, still he can't settle down with either, while his mother is alive. And maybe not even after her death... near the end of the book she passes away, but he is still unable to commit to either woman. One he manipulates into going back to her estranged husband, and the other he decides he can't be with either. So in the end he at least decides against giving up life, and he goes off to find himself, or something, I don't care really! Maybe to recover his artistic abilities, which had died with his mother? Bizarre really.

I understand that the young man's malaise and confusion were the focus, but the repetition, the lack of progress, the poor treatment of others - all these together left me with an impression that I would not be much interested in either learning what became of Paul Morel, or reading anything else by Lawrence.