Fantastic Rendition

Maureen O'Brien gives a dazzling performance. It was word perfect and had a deep understanding and obvious love of the text. Bravo

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The Rainbow

It was a stunning novel, something I would happily listen to again. overall the performance was well delivered but some of the voices put on by the narrator where incredibly annoying at times. D.H. Lawrence is a classic for all the right reasons. Beautiful!

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Making Lawrence more digestible

DH L has his faults but is a kind of revelation - this audiobook helps you to find it. Hard going at first but the reader finds the rhythm.

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Brilliant of course, but you need to love Lawrence

The biography of generations of the Brangwen family, their life at the Marsh and their relationships are layered with passionate intensity and with words that are palpable and breathe.
There is richness in the detail of the characters....intimate thoughts and desires, reflecting their own humanity and themes of class, religion and sexuality pertinent to the period; and the struggle between the rational and instinctual.
Passions are visceral, with interactions that I suspect (I hope...) the rest of us rest experience, but fail to realise; and you need to love Lawrence to endure some of these passages ! I do laugh when Ursula and Anton Skrebensky have sex for the first time and DHL describes this as ....” their final entry into the source of creation “

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the use again of jewish references by 19th century novelists; Lawrence was no different......”Anna Lensky’s father owed money to the Jews...” that reinforce anti-semitic tropes.

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intense, surprising, infuriating

So different from today's bestsellers. I don't think I would have got through this as a written text but I got completely swept up in the audiobook. Narrator is excellent
I am going straight on to Women in Love

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A long slog

I rarely stop listening to a book half way through, but this is a real slog. The storyline is repetitive and depressing. Obviously the quality of the writing cannot be denied and there are some beautiful observations both of the natural world and the inner soul. However, there are only so many times you can listen to a couple hating each other one day qnd loving each other passionately the next day. There is no story line, no interesting characters, nothing changes. I got 12 hours through and couldn't bear any more, couldn't BEAR it (as Lawrence would have repeated). Not for me and I wonder if the narrator regretted her acceptance of the job half way through? She kept up a good show regardless.

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Like therapy

Almost every aspect of human experience is described and explored so vividly. The Rainbow shows you your every colour one by one.

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no gold at the end of this one

It's a few decades since I read any Lawrence and I thought I'd give this a try as one of his landmark novels. It tells the story of three generations of a Derbyshire family and their passions, frailties and accommodations with the rising industrialising world around them. On the plus side is some very poetic writing and description and a vivid characterisation of the main protagonists and their passions/dilemmas. But oh how tedious the struggles with sexuality and identity. This might have been liberating to the spirits of his age, for the first time finding their feelings represented in his characters, but to this modern reader it is tedium in the extreme - overblown romanticism and occasional bodice-ripping flights of fancy. One does care about the characters to a degree - though some are more silhouetted than fleshed out. The tale of the last of the 3 generations is the most interesting - how Ursula Brangwen takes flight in search of her destiny, but did we need to dredge through such acres of previous generations and her own sexual anxst to get there? By the time you get here, you couldn't care less. Lawrence stands up far less well than his contemporaries, such as the wonderfully penetrating Henry James or the magnificent James Joyce. By comparison his plotting, psychology, use of ideas and ability to capture meaning is thin and undistinguished. What an overrated writer he turned out to be.

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3 people found this helpful