The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

General info: Science fiction novel, published in 1898

Storytelling: 9 – This book astounded me a little. Not only was this one of the first novels to depict a frighteningly real alien invasion, it also predicted the development of weaponry in the 20th century, offered up a convincing commentary on imperialism and Social Darwinism, and inspired hundreds of directors and authors to re-create or re-imagine similar events. Not many stories have had that large of an impact, and I think the fact that Wells did this a hundred years ago is truly remarkable.
This book starts with a large canister crash landing in southeast England, which excites and confuses the local residents. Shortly thereafter, the townsfolk figure out that some grotesque looking Martians are the one tinkering around loudly in it, and they are not too friendly. This is when all hell breaks loose, the huge machine starts decimating everything (and everyone) with its powerful heat ray, and it rises out of the ground to further the destruction and move about on tripod legs. Meanwhile, every 24-hours, another canister/tripod crash lands in England, eventually amounting to ten machines that move toward London and kill everyone in sight. They also light a lot of things on fire and come equipped with poisonous black smoke. Good luck, Earthlings.
Now, I love a good sci-fi story, but Wells makes this a truly unique one by making it somewhat scientifically accurate and pretty realistic, even to a 21st century reader. He talks about how Martians would be particularly sluggish dealing with Earth’s gravity, he tries his best to analyze the mechanical workings of the Martian machines, and he examines their motives by explaining how Mars has become a decimated “used up” planet. I also find it fascinating the a hundred years ago Wells was predicting the use of lasers and mustard gas, as well as hinting that we’d better start treating our planet with respect before we use it up. He also disturbingly talks about how the Martians target humans as a source of food by sucking out blood directly and putting it into their own veins. Gross and awesome.
But look at all that’s going on here. Martians have become too lazy even to exist without their machines and they've evolved to the point that they can't even to digest anything. Wells seems to be suggesting that we’re heading in a similar direction. Written during the height of British imperialism, this book is also opening England’s eyes to the fact that they have not been terribly respectful to the populations and cultures that they’ve conquered, just as the Martians aren’t being too great to humans. As an American this book makes me question what my life would be like if I wasn’t living in a tremendously powerful country, or even if I wasn’t at the top of the food chain. Wells’s story strongly implies that we need to have a great deal more respect for the little guys and our own planet. He’s also incredibly funny when he’s putting this into perspective, explaining that the Martians eating habits might seem gross to us, but look at our own eating habits from the perspective of a rabbit. He also likens human ignorance of the Martian invasion to a pair of now-extict dodos having nonchalantly believed that they would bide their time and just attack their assailants tomorrow. He presents these comparisons with a dry wit that delivers his point effectively and makes you laugh at yourself.
My one small complaint with this story is that it doesn’t make much sense to me that the Martians would only target southeast England, and for the reader to have any idea where the main characters are, they have to have a map of England laid out in front of them. Wells assumes that all of his readers are intimately aware of every small town, road, and landmark in London, so it gets terribly confusing at times. GoogleMaps couldn’t even help me with the locations sometimes, the details were so minute.

Writing: 7 – Wells writes this book in a journalistic style, which is fine and all, but it was a definite departure from what I’m used to. At times this approach made it feel a little unemotional. I realize that’s the style Wells was most comfortable with, but when dealing with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and the ruin of an entire country, a novel-length depiction of fact after fact starts to feel a little unnerving. However, the journalistic feel might be what made the novel so poignant. It felt realistic and reinforced the issues that Wells was commenting on. I believe it was the writing that makes the reader truly feel that this might happen someday, and would we really be prepared for it?
The story moves along quickly enough, and the main character covers a lot of ground wandering around worrying about the fate of his brother and his wife and wondering what to do next. I find this approach realistic, as I don’t think anyone would really know what to do in this situation. Wells also breaks off for a few chapters to discuss the fate of the brother, who tries to depart England by sea only to be pursued by one of the tripods. (This perfectly addresses the question: why doesn’t everyone just leave for France?) Each character has a collection of unique adventures that engages the reader and holds your attention. The use of detail does get a bit wearisome at times, but again that might just be the journalism thing.

Characters: 8 – There are in fact very few characters really used in this book and there isn’t much character development, but since it’s not really the aim of the book, I can understand that. You can only really see into the mind of the narrator and his fears and thought processes become realistic enough. He struck me as a curious and intelligent man who wants to fight to survive. It's obvious that this character is modeled after Wells himself.
Other peripheral characters were the main characters wife (I don’t think you ever figure out anyone’s real name), a soldier, an insane clergyman, the brother, two women the brother travels with, and assorted colleagues who die horrible deaths. The two most interesting of all these were the clergyman and the soldier.
The main character is trapped in a basement with the clergyman for about two weeks, during which time he gets to observe unseen and up close the intimate workings of the Martians. The clergyman whines relentlessly, seems to have no strength of character, and starts to selfishly eat all the rations. At one point he shouts out loudly enough so as to attract Martian attention, so the narrator has to knock him out and hide in the basement while the Martians drag away the clergyman’s body and search the house. (This makes you wonder, what is the just and moral thing to do in a similar situation? What would you yourself have done if locked in the basement with an insane man?)
The narrator runs into the soldier after he has escaped the basement and is on the run toward London. The soldier seems to have it in his mind that humans can hide underground in the London sewers and learn the Martian machinery well enough to eventually be able to fight back. He lays out his intricate plan of attack and though at first seduced by this idea, the narrator quickly realizes that this man is just as unhinged as the clergyman and is quickly on his way.
Wells’s characters experience the gamut of human reaction when faced with such an impossibly devastating situation. Perhaps the book was too short to dive into their development as much as I would have liked, or Wells was aiming to elucidate on other elements more. Either way they were effective vehicles for a great story.

Best part: Call me a sap, but I have to say the very end. The narrator is able to safely return home after it is discovered that all of the Martians have died due to common Earth germs. (Respect for the little guy!) Going to the only place he knows to, he walks into his house and is greeted by his wife, who he had not heard any news of since the initial attack. Call me cliché but I loved this little, slightly predictable detail.

Recommend to: My historically and politically minded friends.

Reminded me of: Dracula by Bram Stoker. I found the blend of scientifically analysis + radical and creative storytelling a little similar.

How I would murder the main character: I’d probably strangle him with some Martian Red Weed (a native plant to Mars that quickly starts to thrive on Earth) and throw him into the Thames for providing way too many details about specific locations in London.

Sexy parts: Not so much the aim of the book, unless you count the narrators love for his wife. That’s about all I’ve got for this one.

To sum it up: Creepily insightful and craftily intelligent tale about otherworld invaders.

Overall: 8

The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides

General info: Novel, published in 2011

Storytelling: 9 - So, first and foremost, I need to point out that Middlesex by Eugenides could very well be my favorite book of all time. I remember reading it first at the tender age of 16, and over the past decade I’ve re-read it multiple times. My original copy (still one of my most prized possessions) is tattered and covered with notes written in glitter gel pen. So, as soon as I heard my beloved Eugenides was finally coming out with another book, I ran to Barnes & Noble the day it came out and dove into the book immediately. I naturally had high hopes for this novel, and approached it excitedly and a bit apprehensively.
In a nutshell, I think Eugenides wanted to craft a clever story about his time in undergrad at Brown in the 1980’s. He centers his story around three main characters: Madeleine Hanna, a wealthy English major from New Jersey who is understood to be very good-looking and a bit of a hopeless romantic; Leonard Bankhead, the enigmatic manic depressive scientist from Portland who starts dating Madeleine halfway through their senior year; and Mitchell Grammaticus, a quirky Religious Studies major from Detroit (this is Eugenides’ first novel not set in Detroit, which is his and my hometown) who decides early on in college that Madeleine is his dream girl, and he is going to marry her. The book starts on graduation day and follows these three individuals during their first year after college, with a heavy dose of flashbacks added in to explain key developments.
Firstly, I loved the way Eugenides weaves a story that’s perfectly ordinary but makes it all seem completely bizarre. (I feel like he did the opposite in Middlesex and made the bizarre seem ordinary, but I need to let go of that). These characters don’t go out and do anything terribly eccentric, save for Mitchell’s time volunteering at a hospital in India, but even that is something I could see many kids straight out of college doing. These play tennis, go out for coffee, argue with each other, and drink too much. I think Eugenides’ biggest challenge was making the typical college experience interesting and fresh, and I think he succeeded. I found myself captivated by the turn of seemingly-mundane events, wondering where all the characters end up in the end.
I also felt myself longing for my own college experience and thinking frequently back on how I’d behaved and felt about the world when I was 21. Eugenides drummed up this nostalgia without hammering me over the head with it. Also, I liked that the novel wasn’t strictly chronological. He leaves the reader guessing a few times about how characters have gotten to certain places. For example, why Leonard and Madeline break up for a period their senior year, or why Madeline is upset with Mitchell when the novel starts. I think incorporating flashbacks can be tricky for an author, but I think Eugenides perfected the timing here.
However, although I was largely captivated by the story, it did drag quite a bit. The beginning section is almost painfully slow, as Madeleine is preparing for her graduation, and it takes far too many pages of preamble to explain the nitty-gritty. The novel finally picked up after a bit, but I spent the first portion of the book pretty worried. Additionally, while he’s plodding along, Eugenides started to get a little too fixated on his college experience and couldn’t stop referencing works and authors that were popular on liberal college campuses in the 80’s. He must have referenced 50+ authors, essays, schools of thought, blah blah blah. I appreciate an artistic sprinkling, but instead this effort detracted from the story made it seem as if he was trying to prove something. Unfortunately, I was disappointed at Eugenides’ lack of focus many times throughout the story.

Writing: 8 – Eugenides is a fantastic writer, and I think most of all I love him for his syntax. He is a big fan of lengthy, cleverly descriptive sentences, and this approach combined with his wit makes me adore him. I credit authors who don’t hold back and write what they want to; there is far too much writing out there today that is catering to the lowest common denominator, just to sell more books. I’d much rather be stimulated and have to perhaps go back and re-read a sentence again, just to appreciate the beauty of the structure or an elegant turn of phrase. Eugenides also has a vast vocabulary that he shows off frequently, and I had to keep dictionary.com pulled up on my Iphone for a fair bit of this novel. I love it when an author presents me with a decent challenge that is just hard enough to engage me.
Also, Eugenides can thread together words completely unlike anyone I’ve read before. The sentence that struck me most in this book was when Mitchell is climbing up the steps into the dome of Sacre Coer in France, Eugenides likens his ascent to liquid being drawn into a syringe. I love me a good, slightly wacky analogy, and Eugenides is loaded with them.
However, similar to my critique for Storytelling, Eugenides gets a little too full of himself in this novel. His overly abundant name dropping and his lagging pace, I think, extend both to the Story and to the Writing. I just couldn’t get over this oversight of his. Perhaps his editor was too enamored from his success from Middlesex that he figured Eugenides should be allowed to do whatever he wants. This book would have almost been absolute perfection if it had just been slimmed down a little bit.

Characters: 8 – Analyzing the character development in this book is a little tricky for me, considering I feel like I am just a few years shy of college. Typically I read books that place me out of my comfort zone and help me to understand a time or place I otherwise wouldn’t, but as I said previously, this story did wonders by making the ordinary seem not so.
Anyway, first and foremost, I was not a huge fan of Madeleine. Although Eugenides tries to make her relatable and interesting, she seems completely boring to me, entitled, lost, and slightly pathetically attached to Leonard. I am usually a fan of flawed characters, but for example, after graduation, the wayward and confused Madeleine agrees to go with Leonard to Cape Cod where he is to complete an internship at a lab. There, Eugenides seems to argue that she is doing it to figure out her next steps, and then lo and behold, she’s lonely and doesn’t have much to do. Now, although I myself and many of my friends were lost souls in the months after college, none of us were lost enough to have willingly packed up and moved to a remote destination with our boyfriend, just for lack of something else to do. I feel like this especially wouldn't be the case for an intelligent Ivy-league graduate. I kind of got the feeling that Eugenides didn’t know quite how to write the female figures in this book. Madeleine was boring to me, and then all the other females (Madeleine’s mother, Madeleine’s sister, Leonard’s mother, Mitchell’s friend’s girlfriend) all seemed like unrealistic and overly-dramatic caricatures. There were a few surprising moments and interesting developments, but for the most part I felt really underwhelmed with how the female characters were crafted.
On the flip side, I loved Mitchell and Leonard and the way they developed through the novel. Mitchell, also confused after graduation (Eugenides is correct to assume that every person, post-graduation, is completely lost and wandering) takes off for Europe and India with his still-in-the-closet friend, mostly to “find himself” and figure out who God is. Sure, I could fault him a little for being in love with Miss Boring, but the endearing way he often puts his foot in his mouth, second guesses himself, stresses about his religious beliefs, and tries too hard to succeed are what made him seem real and relatable. He absolutely struck me as a young guy fresh out of an Ivy League education and someone I might befriend.
Leonard, meanwhile, was portrayed brilliantly as a struggling manic depressive. I applaud Eugenides for bringing this disease so effectively to light, in an age where mental illness is still an oft debated topic and many people are still mostly confused. Eugenides brilliantly gets in the head of someone who sways slowly between glittering mania and all-consuming dark depression. Leonard comes from an extremely dysfunctional family and doesn’t have the means that most Brown students do, so he places added pressure on himself and mistakenly thinks twice throughout the novel that going off his lithium is the way to success. He is complex and ultimately likeable, even though he is a madman and an absolute jerk at times. I think dealing with a serious illness was the necessary spark of weirdness that Eugenides needs in each of his novels, having previously dealt with virgin suicides and being a hermaphrodite. Bravo, monsieur.

Best part: While Mitchell is volunteering for Mother Theresa at a hospital in India, he has somehow gotten away with being exempt from the less desirable tasks. Namely, this means bathing the decrepit and dying patients. Finally, one day, he helps another volunteer bathe an old man who is suffering from a gigantic tumor on his genitals. He carries him to the wash room and helps to bathe, clothe and return him to his bed. Mitchell feels quite accomplished. Shortly thereafter, he passes by a patient who happens to speak English, who confesses that he has to take a shit, just as a non-English speaking volunteer approaches him and starts to lather his face for a shave. Mitchell panics, no one is in sight, and the man starts to scream “I’m shitting!” (still in his bed, mind you). Doing what I imagine anyone would do, and even though he will live to regret it, Mitchell makes his decision and walks out the front door of the hospital, never to return again.
I think the absurdity and humanness of this series of events struck me as brilliant. I also love the collection of details that Eugenides employs. It feels like real life, though it’s totally strange.

Recommend to: College students, who need to understand how bewildering those first few post-grad years are going to be!

Reminded me of: a cross between Tom Woolf’s I Am Charlotte Simmons plus writing by Dave Eggers, but a hundred times better executed and more artfully done than either of those authors could manage.

How I would murder the main character: I would steal Madeleine’s Saab and run her down in the street, preferably while she’s wearing her Kennedy-esque tennis gear.

Sexy parts: Once Leonard decides to start lowering his dosage of lithium on his own and his sex drive returns, he and Madeleine start having lots of sex. Eugenides is descriptive about how frequently and often they are doing it, all over their apartment. There are a few other key sexy moments, including ones involving masturbation and drunken behavior at parties, but I think these are artfully done and not lewd.

To sum it up: Although it misses the mark in a handful of ways, this is a delightful and bizarre tale about a pivotal time.

Overall: 8.5

The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

General info: Young adult novel, published in 2005

Storytelling: 5.5 – Having been a German major and someone who lived in Europe for a year, I’ve learned a fair bit about World War II and the Holocaust, and I always appreciate a story that attempts to uncover an authentic perspective from that time. It infuriates me when people assume that all Germans in the 30’s and 40’s were blood-thirsty Nazis who were bent on murdering and conquering everyone. Sure, there were definitely many bad apples, but for the most part I think Germany had been cruelly kicked to the curb after WWI, wasn’t really thinking clearly, got carried away listening to a guy with an atrocious mustache, and woke up one morning in a really horrific situation. Anyway, I digress, but this is main thing I appreciated about Zusak’s book here: the attempt at authenticity.
Zusak’s tale is told from the perspective of Death, which I thought was creatively inspired and unique. He tells the story of Leisel, a pre-teen living on the outskirts of Munich during the war. She, along with most of the members of her community, are the “good Germans”, and he weaves a delightful but heart-breaking tale about the little heroine who learns how to read at the age of ten and starts stealing books because she loves words and reading. This book was in many ways not your traditional young-adult novel, and I enjoyed how Zusak did not gloss over the gory details. For example, the book starts with Leisel’s little brother dying en route to Munich where their mother is handing her children over to foster parents because she is likely to be taken away for her pro-Communist leanings. Leisel never sees her real mother again, and her new foster mother routinely beats her and insults her. She spends the next four years poor and hungry, often confused and scared, until the book weirdly climaxes with the bombing of her neighborhood and the death of most everyone she knows, including her foster parents. However, those are just the sad parts, and there was a great deal of joy and triumph mixed in as well (namely regarding her relationship with her loving and upstanding foster father) and the story ends with Leisel being taken in by the town major and being reunited with the Jewish man her foster family hides in their basement for a few years. However…
I had a lot of issues with the story, even though I ultimately thought it was a good one. Firstly, the book thief nonsense started to not make much sense to me, especially because Zusak attempted to make it about her love for words. Leisel does steal a few books (one from a Nazi burning rally, a few more from the major’s library) but the attempt to make it the centralized theme of the book seemed really weak and contrived. Death goes on and on and on about how she’s about to steal a book because she just loves words so much, but I feel like the character Zusak actually creates with Leisel is just another grubby kid who’d rather go play soccer in the mud or steal apples from an orchard than sit inside reading. It doesn’t line up somewhere.
Also, Zusak’s blunt-force foreshadowing really got on my nerves. Halfway through the book, you realize that Leisel’s parents and closest friends are all going to die (Death talks about when he gets to “meet” them) but I don’t feel like it added to the suspense or made the creative experience richer. And duh, if all the people on a city block suddenly die, and they’re not Jewish, it will be because of a bombing raid. I think I could have deduced that one even without the German major.
Finally, some of the story’s details didn’t really line up historically. During the war, if there was even the faintest suspicion that you sympathized with Jews, the Nazis would have made your life a living hell and strip searched your house multiple times. In this story, they Nazis mostly just ignore Hans (Leisel’s foster father) until he really pisses them off by offering a piece of bread to a Jewish prisoner. Only then does he get sent off to do search and rescue missions in Stuttgart. Yea right. They would have sent him barefoot to Stalingrad or thrown him in jail. They also would not have searched his house one measly time to see if it would be an adequate bomb shelter and not noticed the Jewish man hiding under the stairs. COME ON. I would understand if Zusak was doing this to soften it a little bit to make it appropriate for younger readers, but a few chapters later everyone dies in a pile of rubble. I’m not buying it.

Writing: 7 – I don’t really have much to say about Zusak’s writing, aside from the fact I felt it was perfectly adequate and at times even clever. Writing from Death’s perspective was a stroke of genius, I think, and was what made this book unique when compared to other similar works. (Now that we’re multiple generations past WWII, I feel like more and more books are coming out about the time period because it’s a bit safer and less painful to talk about.) Death offered his perspective and his activities occasionally, but he didn’t overwhelm the reader with some weird macabre, malevolent vibe. I quite enjoyed this Death character and his frequent use of synesthesia to describe his surroundings. He seemed to be a romantic, considerate guy who was just tired of doing his job and running around Europe collecting so many souls so quickly.
Zusak can write well, and his writing is undoubtedly super flowery and poetic, which I’m always a fan of, but it wasn’t as rich or as compelling as I would have liked. Again, this might just be the young adult thing, seeing as I can’t see your average 15-year-old appreciating something too deep. And although Zusak’s story matter was darker, you can tell he’s an author with a sense of humor and an awareness of children. I can understand how this book would appeal greatly to your average reader, but to me it was nothing mind-blowing or life-changing, as all the reviews told me it would be. It was simply a nice story by a good author.

Characters: 5 – First and foremost, this story did not make me cry. And I am a fan of a good cry, and I am a huge fan of kids. It was tragic, and it was meant to be heart-wrenching, but at most all I could really manage was a good frown. For this, I blame Zusak’s characters, and I’ll elucidate with some analysis.
Leisel is your average, perfectly uninteresting 10-year-old as the book starts, and I never really found myself opening up to her as the pages went by. As a child I was the biggest book lover/reader on the market, which is what Zusak was trying to make Leisel out to be, but I never found myself identifying with her. She also, in many ways, seemed to act a little too mature for her age. For example, she’s perfectly fine eating the same thing every night for dinner when rations get limited (I suppose this is because other friends of hers have nothing to eat at all…but still), and her witty one-liners and general demeanor when dealing with older kids smacks of a confidence that is evidenced nowhere else in the book. Something about Leisel just felt slightly off.
Her foster parents, Hans and Rosa, are equally as bland. Hans is, from the get-go, described to be one of those perfectly understated and humble good guys who never lets anyone down, has a heart of gold, does the right thing, blah blah blah. He’s a great father to Leisel and his love for cigarettes, playing the accordion, and teaching his daughter to read in the wee hours of the morning should make him interesting, but he wasn’t. Rosa, who was mildly more interesting with her hot-temper and violent tongue, was described by Death at the end as truly being an exceptional person for having taken in a foster child and a Jewish man, no questions asked. He also attests several times that though she was seemingly cruel, Rosa did love her foster child a great deal. I get that there are some kooky parents out there, but one does not usually show love by berating her child and beating her with a wooden spoon. This seemed to be some weirdo attempt of Zusak’s to add some spice in, and it missed the mark.
The only character I truly liked and appreciated was Leisel’s snarky and troublesome best friend, Rudy. He was well-rounded, flawed, and adorable, and his unrequited childhood love for Leisel was passable. Rudy’s antics and his constant need for approval are human and heart-breaking. He is a perfect nitwit sometimes, gets beat up often and thoroughly, and drags Leisel into all manner of questionable activities, but by golly I really liked him. His death was the only one that almost brought a wee tear to my eye.
Zusak’s characterization, for the most part, was very flat and undeveloped. Even the Jewish man that Hans and Rosa house, Max, left me feeling completely bloodless. (While locked away, all he seems to fantasize about is boxing Hitler in a ring. Not about his family, or a lost love, or freedom…about symbolic boxing. Again, I don’t buy it) I love leaving a book and missing the characters because I’ve grown quite attached to them, but that did not happen here. Zusak had some good material to use and was writing about one of the most heart-wrenching times in human history, but my heart remained uninvolved due to his lack of depth.

Best part: Before meeting Leisel and right around the time of Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, Rudy decides to pain his entire body with charcoal and run around the local track screaming that he’s Jesse Owens. He does this until his father comes to stop him and explains it’s perhaps not the best idea to be celebrating a black man in Nazi Germany. I love this little plotline so much. It properly conveys how children look to their heroes for the right reasons and don’t let prejudice get in the way, which I think is what everyone in Germany needed a reminder of during that time.

Recommend to: High schoolers who are taking European history for the first time and are in need of a little well-rounded perspective.

Reminded me of: A young adult version of Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone, which is a terrific book, inspired by a true story, that talks about the activities of decent Germans in Berlin during WWII.

How I would murder the main character: Although it’s not Leisel’s fault she was bland and two-dimensional, I’d punish her by boiling her in a gigantic vat of pea soup and making her sing Deutschland Über Alles.

Sexy parts: Given that this was intended for young adults, the most scandalous it ever got was when Rudy would bug Leisel to give him a kiss. She never let him, even though nearer the end she almost wanted to (aka: she finally hit puberty). After the bombing when Rudy is found dead, Leisel does finally plant one on his lips, while crying all over him. Although I’m sure Zusak meant for this to be a touching moment, I found it rather gross and predictable.

To sum it up: A well-intended and well-written account of the Holocaust that unfortunately fails to elicit the appropriate response.

Overall: 6

The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence

General info: Novel, published in 1915 (and banned in an obscenity trial later that year)

Storytelling: 6 - This is my first foray into D.H. Lawrence, and I’ve come out of this book feeling a bit bewildered. I decided to start here because it’s one of his first works and is also the prequel to Women in Love. Being a fairly organized individual, I like to keep things chronological when I can, and I assumed I’d read more by him.
Diving in, I was a bit put off in the first few pages by the fact that Lawrence isn’t much a fan of plot. In fact, he throws plot almost completely out the window, and 75% of this novel is his in-depth analysis of the passionate and disparate emotions of his three main characters: Tom Brangwen, his step-daughter Anna Brangwen, and her eldest daughter Ursula Brangwen. The very British Brangwen family has lived in Nottinghamshire for as long as anyone can remember, and Lawrence spends 400 pages spanning four decades through the eyes of these three characters. The story is loosely laced in, and there are even a few exciting moments, but it’s apparent that weaving a tale isn’t necessarily why Lawrence is hailed as a genius. Sure, I love me a good saga, but as someone who admittedly adores epics above all else, I found myself getting a little bored. This was not a book that I sailed through with ease, and after nineteen paragraphs about Ursula’s conflicted feelings regarding her to-be-or-not-to-be fiancé, I felt myself wanting to scream “GET ON WITH IT!” and fling the book across the street. (He ends up a not-to-be fiancé, which I’m guessing is what paves the way for Women in Love)
However, being a benevolent book reviewer, I will acknowledge the fact that there are some people who love this, and Lawrence most likely wouldn’t be a household name if he were a novelist who completely couldn’t tell a story. I will also acknowledge the fact that Lawrence was a lot more radical and blasphemous (and perhaps, compelling?) to the turn-of-the-century British reader than he is to this jaded 21st century girl. I didn’t bat an eyelash at the thought of Ursula having premarital sex, but I can understand that turn-of-the-century London would have been screaming bloody murder. So, although I was disappointed by the lack of a spicy plotline, I will only place a little bit of the blame on Lawrence. I’m reading this book a century too late, and I’m also unabashedly biased toward more fantastical works.

Writing: 9 – Ok THIS is why D.H. Lawrence is a household name; the man makes love to the English language. He can wax poetic for pages about a passionate exchange or a lingering moment without ever coming up for air. He crafts sentences with such care and delicacy that I can understand why he simply had to write like this, even if it was so controversial at the time. This material was coming out of him in buckets. (This is perhaps why, since I am so unaccustomed, I left this book feeling a bit sideways) While I was well aware that Lawrence is a highly sexualized writer, I was surprised by how sensual his writing was and his mastery of the complicated blend of love and hate.
Lawrence’s sensuality was pervasive to a surprising degree. Whether he was talking about farming, family dynamics, the weather, the waves at the beach, etc. Lawrence was crafting his words with a tenderness that I appreciated. I personally thought sex played into it very little, and sensuality took the lead, which was something I have never experienced before as a reader.
Additionally, while he was doing all of this, I was also alarmed at how well he identifies the conflicting and painful emotions that people can feel when they are deeply in lust or love. Lawrence loves to strip his characters down until they are completely emotionally naked, and then he dives in for a few pages to examine all the nuances. He especially loves to examine that ever-so fine line that exists between love and hate, which I think we all can understand. When someone becomes so critical to your life, and they disappoint you or anger you in some horrendous way, I believe we all can identify with the depth of emotion that you can sink to in your most trying moments. Reading a billion pages about this felt uncomfortable at points (I can’t imagine having been someone who knew him…or was loved by him...) but he did so with respect and with precision. The words would roll along languidly, spilling into each other, and although there were a few times where I didn’t know what the hell was going on, I attribute this to the dreamlike state the Lawrence puts you in. His writing is like a deep-tissue massage that you’re a little terrified of. It was a wholly new experience and one that I ultimately enjoyed a great deal.

Characters: 6 – It was apparent to me from the get-go that Lawrence’s characters were everything to him, and that their development was ultimately his hardest work. For the most part, I appreciated this and congratulate him for his efforts, but I think he went a little bit overboard in a few ways.
Although I met a variety of characters in this book, his three main players are obviously who he examines most closely. I also think he fell in love with Ursula’s character so much that he had to go and write an entirely different book about her. What I found odd was that Tom, Anna, and Ursula are all strikingly similar in their reactions to love and relationships, but their personalities are all completely different. Tom is a fairly even-keel farmer, contented to live on his Marsh. Anna is a strong-willed and sharp-tongued figure who grows to be a lazy housewife with nine children. Ursula is your typical independent and idealistic eldest child who runs off to college and never wants to get married. How would it be possible that those three individuals would approach a relationship the same way? This was weird to me and highly implausible. I get that family members will act similarly in certain situations, but I found myself thinking that I was ready for a new reaction and some different material by the time we had reached Ursula’s generation.
Regarding their reactions, although the Brangwens are supposed to be your everyday upper middleclass family, they are awfully dramatic and inhumanly mercurial. As I said above, I loved how Lawrence touched on the love/hate line, but his main characters spent a little too much time in the hate category. I’ve never met so many fictional characters who despise and fear their loved ones so vehemently. Then, five pages later, they’re desperately in love again and all the birds are out chirping. I get that lovers argue and don’t understand each other, but that seems to be all that is ever going on in Lawrence’s World of Crazy Love. Perhaps this is how it was a hundred years ago in the UK. Yikes.
As a short note, I will however mention that I adored the way that Lawrence examined Christianity in this books. His characters struggle with it immensely, all in unique ways. For example, Anna harps against the church for basically her whole life, while Ursula falls deeply in love with it as a child and then strays from it as she grows. I’ll admit I didn’t examine it as closely as I probably should have, but I liked that Lawrence also left their religious beliefs a little murky. I think this gave it some authenticity.

Best part: Ursula is loosely engaged to be married to Anton Skrebensky. She has a ring, they frequently visit hotels in London together, they say I love you, etc. etc. However, Ursula won’t really admit to herself or to Anton that she never really sees herself getting married. She goes along with it, perhaps because she likes the attention and his company. Either way, she is a saucy minx who ends up completely breaking his heart by running out on him at the last minute, weeks before he is to ship off to India with the British military. By the time Ursula realizes she’s pregnant with Skrebensky’s child and writes him that she does indeed want to get married, he’s been wed to someone else. Way to make decisions, Ursula.

Recommend to: People who appreciate turn-of-the-century British lit and are a little kooky.

Reminded me of: Only due to their treatment of sexual tension and the complex emotions that love evokes, I have to say Gabriel Garcia Marquez, although the two authors are so very different.

How I would murder the main character: Because she cruelly lead Skrebenksy on, I would sever some of Ursula’s main arteries with broken biology lab equipment and then leave her locked in a room with her eight younger siblings.

Sexy parts: Ursula and Skrebensky seem to have a lot of sex in public. Although Lawrence doesn’t come outright and go into detail (for which he would have likely been put to death and not just sued) you can tell that if they’re spending time under a shady tree on the riverbank, something promiscuous is going on. Also, Ursula has a brief lesbian relationship with her school mistress, Winifred. (I realize at this point you may be doubting my claim that I found this book a little boring, but I'm ok with that)

To sum it up: A rollercoaster of sensual and in-depth emotional discovery.

Overall: 7