Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence - A Book Review

          

          Let’s keep the controversy surrounding this book, the fact that it had to go through one of the most controversial litigation away for a moment.
     

          What is this novel about? The carnal pleasures of life? Yes, to a great extent, but more than that it is the eruptive discovery of what it could do to you; how it could change your life, kill the faith in you; the nonsensical faith of being right and proper, of losing out on, of suppressing a craving.

          All along in a vulgar attempt to prostitute the rightful and just path, we have been taught to know a person, to judge him by his mind, his heart and not by his body. But can these be separated, is it justified? Is pleasure to be feared, to be subdued? How can anything you feel so good about, ecstatic about be ever wrong?

          Lust by itself is lust alone, but mixed with the throes of desire fused with love, a pure kind can create that alchemy of desire that can stand alone, against the world in a form of gutsy rebellion; an inseparable bond between the body and the mind. Is it contemptuous to crave a wild fondling, to be touched in the right places, to enjoy the stickiness, to amaze at the pleasures that can be given, that can be taken, to arouse and douse the fire of the engines of creation; of shedding that skin of righteousness and being naked in the true sense of the body and mind? 

          D.H.Lawrence’s story written in 1928 is as contemporary as today; it’s eternal. Lady Constance Chatterley is trapped in a life with her crippled husband Clifford, his attempts with the pen, with his unworthy wordy friends. Clifford’s accident crippling him has bent permanently some part of her too; inside. She is resigned to be his caretaker rather than his companion. Her brush with the gamekeeper, Mellors turns out to be more than a mere brush and a scandalous affair breathes out a freshness in her; from his tenderness. Mellors, though of the so called low strata of society, is a true man of beliefs, of values that cannot be misconstrued in any form. That makes her care less about anything, anything at all. She contrives with her lover to be with him forever, to bear his child. In the language of the body and the punctuation of touch, she feels words are so vulgar.

          It’s a rich story, high on emotions, composed beautifully. To attempt to comprehend if Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley is disloyal or a self-centered persona would be to form an opinion of her and be judgmental. Though personally I slightly disliked the character of Lady Chatterley, her irritating hatred towards almost everything, her needless opinion forming and her obstinacy on finding comfort; I should let her go, since, it is a woman’s mind and a man can only attempt to comprehend it and appear foolish!

          The only personal opinion I make is - poor, really poor are the people who receive in life a companion who loves and lusts, with vigor and passion and is then taken for granted and not held worthy for doing so - such a shame, such a loss!

My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 7/10

The Sea by John Banville – A Book Review

Claim to Fame : John Banville's books have won various awards. 'The Sea' is the 2005 Man Booker prize winner while his novel 'The Book Of Evidence' was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker prize.

The Sea

            This is simply beautiful writing!

An incident. It rocks your world, shakes it, and torments you. More so when you have been a silent observer. The author, John Banville doesn’t present a major story with a gut wrenching plot. This novel is more a tale of feelings; it is a rendition of a widower’s life, of what is left of it, riding deep into the waves of his emotions, facing the tidal highs and lows of his past and present life, the turmoil in the depths of his loneliness. Max, the central character of this novel is deprived of the company of his only companion, his wife, snatched away from him by a fatal disease. He misses her and like a buzzing insect attracted to the lamp in a room only to be struck dead by the rotating blades of the fan, he comes to rest and live his life of solitude in the only place he has a strong memory of, the house of the Cedars by the sea.

A belonging to the sea is maybe more a matter of penance, than a matter of belonging for Max, of what has been taken away than what has been given. The author gleefully flirts; plays hide and seek traversing the lengths of Max’s past and present. His recollection of the Grace family from his childhood days and the impact they created on his psyche becomes an integral inseparable part of his memories. The insouciant behavior of the entire Grace family, right from the flirting mother, the carefree and unconcerned father, the impish and reckless son to the brattish daughter becomes incomprehensible for him but still he hangs along to create a so called social bearing on his character, to feel and experience acceptance.

The dying of his wife Anna, the death of her, the sole companion of his journey through his adult life during which he was with her, throws him into the throes and pangs of his past and he ends up living more there than here, in the present.

The narrative is like a child’s weaving of a string of beads from sundry things that he finds here and there, some of shape, others shapeless, lacking of a strict arrangement or like the seemingly meaningless endless helter-skelter running of a deer, deviating frequently from the flow. The author makes you wade through numerous rivers of the protagonist’s life before merging them in the sea.

No wonder a large population of book lovers hates the Booker winners like this one. You read most of the novel and wonder, “Why am I putting myself through this sad saga of this old man and his miseries when it is not half as interesting as I thought it to be”. But then, life is not always an engrossing plot or a clever story. This novel, its words, the thoughts are like a heartfelt beautifully written poem. Some of the sentences amaze you with their depth. It is like a melancholy song that you would like to hum, the one that strikes and spurs a feeling deep inside – that is the power of such brilliant writing!

Some beautiful lines from the book:

• Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
• In those endless October nights, lying side by side in the darkness, toppled statues of ourselves, we sought escape from an intolerable present in the only tense possible, the past.
• She was standing between me and the window, talking to another woman, and for a moment my eye had difficulty fixing a depth of focus, since it seemed that, of the two of them, Anna, being so much the bigger, must be much nearer to me than the one to whom she was speaking.

My rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 8/10

John Banville