Book review

The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence

The plot: virtually nonexistant. Marriage, sex, foreign people, eating, sex sex, death, sex sex sex, popping out babies, children, sex, marriage, attempts at marriage, various philosophical tangents, sex. A great character novel.

Why it might be worth reading all 450-odd pages (although I skimmed through some): Lawrence perfects waxing poetic. Plus, the gratuitous sex (riskay for 1915's standards, and enough to make you want to grab your lady for some hardcore mouth kissing by today's) makes the repetitiveness almost not annoying.

The reason you should not combine the words "breast", "quivering anemone" and "cleaved" in such close proximity (aka, the point where I felt like my feminine parts were being reduced to flayed fish skin, to be used in some strange fertility ritual): '"The moon has risen," said Anton, as the music ceased and they found themselves suddenly stranded, like bits of jetsam on a shore. She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon."

What's his beef? Trying to negotiate the ground between industrialization and individuality/Nature/man's "will". Also some curious backhanded digs at organized religion, and an introduction to the art of the female body (thus the banning of his books).

An interesting use of: Flaubertian f & i, and nice homage, at that.

Rating: a 6 of 10, for being slightly more useful than a romance novel.