Gone with the Wind part 5 (ch. 48-63)

Follow the Great Gone with the Wind Readalong at The Heroine’s Bookshelf. Today we discuss part 5.

So first off, head’s up: this post contains spoilers. I imagine there are still folks out there who have never read OR seen Gone With the Wind (I hadn’t!) and if that’s you, I recommend you go away (she says very sweetly) so that you can enjoy the surprises that I enjoyed as I discovered this book for the first time. Fellow discussers and readers-along, welcome.

Oh, Scarlett. Sigh. This was a painful section to read because of all the missed opportunities for happiness that she and Rhett bungled in their respective pride. It was clear to me throughout that they had tender feelings for one another, but they’re both so proud, and Scarlett is so thick, that they don’t get it together in time. For me, that was the tragedy of part 5 – yes, eclipsing even deaths.

So in this section, Scarlett and Rhett are married, and Scarlett achieves relative contentment; she finally has money and security, and has some fun with her new unscrupulous friends. Her relationship with Rhett is only partially stable, and she’s bothered by his odd attitude and the fact that she has still failed to control him, but she pushes these thoughts away. Melanie continues to be a rock, several times solidifying her role as supporter and true friend to Scarlett, who learns to grudgingly appreciate her, at least most of the time. Scarlett’s lust for Ashley seems to cool, but she’s so accustomed to pining for him that she continues to do so even as his polish fades. The birth of Bonnie sets Rhett off in a whole new direction in life; it’s odd to see him so doting and blind to the spoiled child he’s creating, but of course it’s also endearing to see his love for his daughter.

What did you think of Melanie not believing in Scarlett and Ashley’s unfaithfulness? Is she showing again her admirable strength, or is she a fool for her naivete and blindness? I do feel a hint of the latter; but on the whole I agree with Rhett and (as far as I can tell) Mitchell, that she behaves heroically. Once she decides that a person is her beloved friend and deserving of her support, this woman holds on, doesn’t she? I think Scarlett respects her, too, somewhere deep down. I really liked the maturity that finally came out as a result of the “hair shirt of shame”:

With one of the few adult emotions Scarlett had ever had, she realized that to unburden her own tortured heart would be the purest selfishness. She would be ridding herself of her burden and laying it on the heart of an innocent and trusting person. She owed Melanie a debt for her championship and that debt could only be paid with silence.

Finally, here’s Scarlett showing some personal growth! And no great surprise that it comes through Melanie.

I marveled a bit at a society so deeply concerned with gossip that apparently no one thought to say… “Look, Melanie, I don’t care if Ashley boinked Scarlett or not. I like you and I like India and I’m just going to be neutral on the bedroom concerns; is that okay?” I feel like Melanie might have been open to that kind of frank dismissal of her private business; really that might be her first preference: to have people consider her marriage a private matter and butt out. This is a modern angle, I guess, but as a modern woman it’s the first reaction that comes to my mind, if I were an outer-circle acquaintance of the parties involved.

The end-of-book tragedies that destroy Scarlett’s world all over again fell a little short for me. Bonnie was gorgeously cute, but also spoiled and obnoxious. She wasn’t developed much beyond her role as Rhett’s plaything, his doll, and at best, his new lease on life; I was excited for him in that last aspect, but as a character Bonnie didn’t hold great value for me. I think I felt her death coming on, and when it happened it didn’t move me as deeply as I think it was supposed to. Scarlett grieves, but again not profoundly; she’s never cared that much for her children, and if Bonnie was her most loved, that still wasn’t saying much. Her love was heavily tainted with jealousy, too. I felt that Bonnie’s death was a plot device: things had to fall apart again, and she was the object on which all of Rhett’s energies had focused, and around which Scarlett’s world had begun to revolve, so she fell. But it struck me as a clinical move made by Mitchell, rather than the wrenching death of a child that might have twisted my heart. It fell flat.

Melanie’s death, now, got to me much more – Melanie having been such a strong character who I’d come to love and admire. Although she had her flaws right til the end, too: a blind love for Ashley in all his flaws and a refusal to see Scarlett’s duplicity, which was part of her virtue but also earns some disrespect. It was heart-wrenching that she died, yes. But Scarlett immediately then began her triple revelations, and I lost patience. She loves Melanie! Melanie was a real friend! Ashley is boring! Rhett is a) wonderful, b) just like Scarlett, c) loves her and d) gasp, she loves him too! The reader, of course, knew all these things 100’s of pages ago, so her dramatic realizations and emotional flailings just exasperated me. It’s a shame, really, because this book had me firmly in its grasp for the bulk of it. But in the end I think I lost patience.

I spent the book rooting for Scarlett. I identified with her in her worst moments, and refused to pass judgment. But she let me down by not meeting reality when she most needed to, and for coming around when it was just too late, and then for being so dramatic about it at the end. Rhett became more and more sympathetic, admirable, and crush-worthy as the book went on; but he, too, failed to step up when it most mattered. While I accept his argument that Scarlett valued what she didn’t have, I think he was a bit late in letting her see his love; I think he might have won her with a little tenderness. But maybe he was right and her “love” for Ashley needed to run its course. The ending was certainly tragic – two people destined to be together missing one another like ships in the night. But it may have gone on just a bit too long to hold my interest.

On another note – what do you make of that night that Scarlett and Rhett shared in chapter 54? I know that it is understood as a rape scene by some, but I’m not sure I buy it, for this reason: she enjoyed it, and women don’t enjoy being raped. Clearly it was rough and passionate and she wasn’t sure what to make of it; but she enjoyed it, both in the moment and in thinking about it again the next morning. She blushes, thinking that a “lady” doesn’t enjoy such things (i.e. rough sex). But I think rape is a stretch. What do you think? It seemed like the stark honesty of that night, if nothing else, offered the couple one of those chances to share their feelings for one another and seek happiness, but of course they missed the chance when he dashed off the next morning.

So to wrap up here: I loved this book very much. It’s a page-turner. It has heroes, villains, real human characters, war, love, death, and perseverance. It had me completely wrapped up in its pages – I sat by the pool in Key West and trembled with Scarlett and Melanie on that bumpy ride out of Atlanta with the world burning around us. A hell of a great book, although with some real issues regarding racial sensitivity. But the ending fell a little short for me; the tragedies felt a little manufactured, Scarlett’s pain was a little protracted and tiresome, and I was disappointed that her tortured romance with Rhett didn’t have the least final redemption. I thought we’d earned some, but clearly I was wrong. On the other hand, I did appreciate the note of hope or at least the note of uncertainty it ends with. Where is Scarlett headed next?

Finally, thank you so much Erin for finally getting me to open these pages. It was well worth it. Thanks also to my fellow readers-along; it’s been fun to have someone to share with and to see our different reactions. I’m betting some of you found the ending much more satisfying than I did, and I look forward to hearing your reasons.

The Enemy by Lee Child (audio)


The 8th book in Child’s Jack Reacher series is a flashback, a prequel, set in Reacher’s days of employment with the U.S. Army. He is an MP (military police) major and it’s New Year’s Eve, 1989. The Berlin Wall has just come down, Soviet Russia is collapsing, and the U.S. military is facing major changes. Reacher has just been transferred from Panama to Fort Bird in North Carolina when people start dying. He enlists the help of young Lieutenant Summer and the two of them quickly find themselves drawing outside the lines – the military establishment repeatedly orders them off the case, makes threats, and finally demands their arrest. As we expect of Reacher, though, he solves the crimes and fixes everybody up right.


This is fun for several reasons. We finally see Reacher on the job. We see him and his brother Joe interacting; Joe is only treated in the past tense in the other books. (Well, there is the short story The Second Son also, in which the brothers are teenagers.) We meet Reacher’s mother and learn something about her past that her sons never knew; this is an especially poignant moment.

A few things are different in this book, too. For one thing, Reacher does fix up the problems and solve the mysteries; but it doesn’t end on quite as hopeful a note as the other books tend to. In his retired, roaming life, Reacher generally sets off into the sunset at the end of the book, headed for unknown adventures, with a world of possibilities ahead of him. At the end of The Enemy, he’s still in the army, but things have changed irrevocably; the end of his career is foreshadowed, and we begin to understand why he chose to get out. There’s a sadness. He wasn’t able to right all the wrongs. Something that’s not different in this book: I’m sad to see Summer go. But the characters we come to love in each book are always necessarily gone at the end; Reacher moves on.

Suspension of disbelief is necessary in every Reacher book; he’s too good, too strong, too smart, too perfectly-timed and awesome to be real. But I have a good time and I can play along. This time I had a little more difficultly with the suspension of disbelief, though, because he went so far off the reservation while in the army. I’m accustomed to seeing him not play nice, but he’s usually a renegade wanderer; it’s a little more bizarre to see him be just as much a rebellious loner while he’s still in the military.

But putting that quibble aside, it’s a highly enjoyable book as usual, and fans of the series will appreciate the backstory and further character development (of Reacher, as well as his brother and mother) provided by this flashback.

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Once Upon a River is a beautiful book. The story is not joyful, let me say that right off. But it’s beautifully wrought, and in fact, when I finished it and stepped back and viewed it as a whole, I decided that the story has a certain beauty, too. A sad beauty, but a beauty that’s true to life.

This is the story of Margo. She grows up in a little town on the Stark River in Michigan, hunting, fishing, and living and breathing the river. She is close to her grandfather, and lives in the outdoors; school and social situations are difficult for her. She’s a very skilled outdoorswoman, and an especially good shot; Annie Oakley is her hero. Bad things happen. Margo’s mother leaves, and as her situation further deteriorates, she takes off upstream in the boat her grandfather gave her to look for her mother. Margo lives off the land and the river, mostly. She makes a few alliances but they all fall apart. People and relationships are not as reliable as the river and the outdoor world in which she feels safe and comfortable. More bad things happen. She grows up some, learns about people, and learns more about the natural world. She moves upstream and downstream, learns how to survive with her hands, a few tools, and her skills, along the lines again of Annie Oakley (she will eventually own two biographies, among her few prized possessions).

This story is painful in more than a few spots. Plenty of bad things happen, including several rapes and quite a bit of death. There’s no shortage of young people having sex, to which your reactions may vary. (Consensual? In itself a “bad thing”?) You will cringe. But like many books that are both sad and realistic, the cringing might be worth it. Margo’s story actually looks skyward, hopefully, at the end. She finds and makes some good things, too.

Campbell has full grasp of metaphor. The river flows on, and Margo learns its rhythms, and how to assert herself while following its current. She finds the river to be a more constant (if not predictable) force than human nature. Campbell has full grasp of language, too; she writes beautifully, lyrically, symbolically. In the end it’s a gorgeous book and I recommend it wholeheartedly. So, to recap: bad things happen, but beautifully. It’s a book about life.

Without Fail by Lee Child (audio)

Reacher is back!

This one follows Echo Burning, my very first Lee Child read. Reacher has just hitchhiked cross-country, from Los Angeles to Atlantic City, with a pair of musicians who, while minor characters, I came to appreciate. Reacher’s interactions with these minor players help to form his character as a basically good-hearted and generous guy; he goes out of his way for them. In Atlantic City, Reacher is tracked down by a Secret Service woman who knows him through his brother Joe, her ex-boyfriend. She wants to hire him to assassinate the Vice President elect. Weird, right? No, she wants him to sort of mock-assassinate. It’s meant to be a security audit. But of course, the reason why she wants a security audit is… someone is trying to kill the Vice President. (Elect).

I have to confess that my first reaction to the plot premise was… do Vice Presidents really get assassinated? I thought the old joke was that they were sort of insignificant, until somebody assassinates the President. At any rate, I gladly buy in because it’s a fascinating storyline. So Reacher is working with Froehlich – that’s Joe’s ex, the Secret Service ace – and Neagley, a fellow retired MP and general badass who Reacher calls in. Neagley was a fun character to meet, too: she’s got skills and smarts much like Reacher, and they’re clearly pretty close, but she also has baggage that I’d love to learn more about in a later novel. The layers that are discovered! Well, so we spend a lot of time in DC for obvious reasons, and also in North Dakota where the VP-elect has been serving as Senator; and the final scene takes place in the middle of nowhere in Froehlich’s home state of Wyoming. It’s a well-traveled book (have you been counting? CA, NJ, DC, ND, and WY) and naturally ends with a bang.

I have just a handful of new observations with this listen. As stated, I’m really enjoying some of the minor or side characters. I have also noted something in this book that I’ve been unconsciously appreciating throughout this series: Child presents back-story, technical details, and general exposition in a smooth and natural way. You know how sometimes, if we need to know that the kid goes to soccer practice every Wednesday, the mom will say to the dad, “Can you pick up Billy from his usual Wednesday night soccer practice this week even though I usually do?” And that’s silly, because real people don’t put in all that detail in dialog when the other person already knows it? Child does it better.

Also, I’m beginning to notice speech patterns. Reacher has a way of ending a lot of his statements with a rhetorical “…right?” As in, “so, we need to get there first, right?” It’s just one of those colloquialisms people have. But what I think I noticed in this book is… other people have the same verbal habits. I’m not sure that’s entirely realistic, since one of the features of the Reacher books is travel, geographic instability, everybody being from different places. Reacher even emphasizes this, observing from people’s speech and clothing that they come from different parts of the country; he’s really big on regionalism. I like those touches. But everyone having the same rhetorical “…right?” seems somehow less authentic. I don’t know, it’s just something I noticed.

Along the same lines, I think I’m beginning to hear narrator Dick Hill (who I love for this series!) use the same voices for several different characters. All women, I think, and that may explain it; it may be difficult for his deep man’s voice to come up with different female-character-voices. But still. I guess I’m beginning to recognize patterns. Is it perhaps time for a break from Reacher? Ha ha ha. NO! I’m still loving it. Don’t take my Reacher away.

Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson by Amanda Smith

The exhaustive–but not exhausting–biography of a complicated and difficult woman, heiress to a newspaper dynasty and a fascinating and controversial figure.

Amanda Smith’s (Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy) exhaustively researched biography of Cissy Patterson begins several decades before her birth, with her grandfather Joseph Medill and his creation of the Chicago Tribune. The extended family of Medills, Pattersons and McCormicks would be newspaper royalty for several generations; but perhaps none cut a stranger figure than Cissy.

Eleanor Medill Patterson, known as Cissy, led was born in 1881 into a fractious, influential newspaper family and married a dissolute Polish count who turned out to be broke and who kidnapped their daughter, Felicia. With great effort and the interventions of powerful political figures from around the world, she regained her daughter and divorced. The countess then had a series of unsatisfying relationships and grew estranged from Felicia; published two acclaimed novels; and married a Jewish man despite her apparent anti-Semitism and eventual sympathy with the Nazi cause in World War II. Late in life, she began a newspaper career as journalist, editor and, finally, publisher and owner of the enormously successful Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, which she created out of two failing papers. When she died in 1948, alcoholic, vindictive and erratic Cissy left a fortune, including ownership of the Times-Herald, whose disposition was held up by court battles sparked by conflicting wills and accusations of her insanity.

Called “perhaps the most powerful” and the “most hated” woman in America in the 1940s, Cissy’s fascinating and curious life is examined here in detail. But this lengthy book is never boring, because its subject is such an outrageously flamboyant and historically significant figure.


This review originally ran in the September 20, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

The Coldest Fear by Rick Reed

A fast-paced crime thriller involving a serial killer; likable, witty detectives; and a mess of body parts.

Rick Reed, former police detective and author of the true crime Blood Trail, brings back Detective Jack Murphy from his first novel The Cruelest Cut in this suspenseful ride. A woman’s body is found mutilated and missing parts in a bathtub at the Marriot in Evansville, Indiana; mere hours later, Jack is looking at her right hand, arranged alongside the similarly abused body of a young mother in the projects. The bodies stack up quickly as Jack and his partner struggle to keep up with their own investigation. A local newspaper reporter scoops them at every turn, and his source just might be their serial killer. They’re taken out to a small town with a two-man police department, and then an FBI profiler is brought in, as the case quickly spins into mammoth proportions and spans jurisdictions.

Reed lends his professional expertise to this thriller in which the vantage point shifts from Jack’s criminal investigation to the perspective of the killer, providing a unique reading experience. The murderer remains nameless, but we get glimpses into what drives him and what makes him hesitate. When his identity is finally revealed, the shock is not lessened, but the journey gets an interesting twist from the shifting viewpoint.

Reed’s second crime thriller delivers with fast-paced suspense, twists and turns, the humor of several witty detectives and that rarity of fiction, a likeable FBI agent. Gruesome serial killings are balanced by banter, the sweet if harried relationship between Jack and his parole officer girlfriend, and an ending with a note of hope.


This review originally ran in the September 16, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Challenge Update: Where Are You Reading?

Well, you might recall from my last challenge update that I COMPLETED (yay!) two of the three challenges I took on for 2011, and with months to spare, too. Now that the year is drawing nearer to its close, it’s time to concentrate on the last and most difficult one: Where Are You Reading? Sheila at One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books has assigned this one. My job is to read a book set in each of the 50 states, plus bonus points for foreign locations. (Take a look at my map to see where I’ve been.)

So. At this point I’ve completed 24 of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia!), and it’s time to start picking and choosing those remaining. They are:

  • Alabama
  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • Delaware
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Maryland
  • Mississippi
  • Montana
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • Tennessee
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • Virginia
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin

Here we are, kids: I need your help! Please to recommend me some books! Do you have a book (or an author of several books) who writes in one of these states that you can recommend to me? I would greatly appreciate it. For example, if you were looking for Louisiana I would GUSH over James Lee Burke to you. But Virginia? Beats me. Help a girl out!

Do you think I’m going to make it?

Tripwire by Lee Child (audio)


Y’all, I just have to tell you something as an aside: I suspect I’m pretty unique in this, because I know so many strict series-in-order readers, but I LOVE reading out of order. Is there something wrong with me? I love the fun feeling of knowing something the in-order reader won’t. Rather than ruining the surprise (which, honestly, I don’t think I can remember happening to me ever!) I often find it enhancing things; it’s like a whole new fun, knowing what’s coming, especially in that moment of realization. In Tripwire, for instance: I will try to do this nonspoilerarily, but there is a character we meet for the first time, who I pretty quickly recognized as a character from a later book I’ve read. So I had this moment of OH! she will be THIS later, and now I have a new angle from which to watch the action unfold: I’m looking for hints of what I know is to come. No, I don’t want to know who the bad guy is right from the start. But that’s not the kind of thing I find spoiled by a series out of order. Perhaps this is because often, in mystery series, we don’t see the same bad guy in book after book. Or if we do, it’s not the FACT that he’s the bad guy that drives the later book – it’s finding him. So, no spoiler. See? Flipping to the end would spoil the book; reading the book after the book often does not. On the other hand, though: knowing that there are more Reacher books after 61 Hours definitely does spoil the question of whether or not he survives. I guess the only way to be cliff-hanged on that one was if you read it when it came out and before the next in the series…

I’m sorry. Back to Tripwire. Ahem. I loved this book… I seem to say this every time… this is one of my favorites of the series. It opens in Key West, which is fun because we were just there recently. I love the idea of Reacher digging swimming pools (by hand!!) and getting even more muscled, gaining weight, and getting a tan while he’s at it. I also love that he’s drinking lots of water. I’m a fan of water, too, and like Reacher I like mine at room temp, not cold. I’ve digressed again. So we open in Key West but then quickly move up north to New York City, where Reacher is reunited with a friend from his past. Again I’m working to avoid spoilers here, but the relationship, past and present, was extra special to me because it continues to develop Reacher’s character, and is especially poignant in exposing his strong emotions and vulnerability. What makes Reacher so loveable is that he is a Rambo superhero type, yes, and also very clever, but also vulnerable. There are humorous moments. Will the house have… closets?? (Go read it, you’ll understand.) And of course the mystery is clever and complex and kept me guessing. I love Reacher’s deductions, like in dealing with decades-old skeletal remains – this puzzle dates back to the Vietnam War – and I love how it ends, with a new chapter in Reacher’s life.

I recently bothered you with a rundown of my reading of Reacher to date. While putting together that list, I realized that they fall into two categories for me: memorable, and not so much so. I’ve enjoyed every single Reacher I’ve read, but some I LOVE and continue to mull over after the fact, and some, in compiling my list, I had to reference to even see what they were about. (The titles are not always descriptive of the action of the book.) Are you curious? Below, see those I have read and loved, those I have read and mostly forgotten, and those I have not yet read. (For links to my reviews, see this post.)

1. Killing Floor
2. Die Trying
3. Tripwire
4. Running Blind
5. Echo Burning
6. Without Fail
7. Persuader
8. The Enemy
9. One Shot
10. The Hard Way
11. Bad Luck and Trouble
12. Nothing to Lose
13. Gone Tomorrow
14. 61 Hours
15. Worth Dying For
16. The Affair
and the short story, The Second Son.

Tripwire ranks up there. I fear my Reacher reviews are getting repetitive for you. Excellent as usual. Continuing on with Without Fail next. What are YOU reading?

The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar

A deceptively quiet story, with swift currents running deep beneath its surface, considers the fate of an unprepared Mexican housekeeper in Orange County left to care for her employers’ young children.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar‘s second novel tackles the ambitious goal of characterizing Southern California’s multicultural schizophrenia and achieves it admirably.

Araceli is quietly comfortable in her role as housemaid to the Torres-Thompson household in Orange County, one of three Mexican domestics; but when the gardener and nanny are suddenly dismissed, she is puzzled to find herself expected to care of three children she considers strangers. Worse, she wakes up one morning to find both her employers gone with their baby–leaving her alone in the house with two young boys. In desperation, she sets off with them on a daunting trek through diverse and unfamiliar Los Angeles to try to find their estranged paternal grandfather.

Tobar creates an intriguing juxtaposition of cultures, as the Torres-Thompson children are thrust into a huge, unfamiliar, multiethnic city. Most observations are from Araceli’s perplexed, amused, lyrically bilingual perspective. At other times, we look through the boys’ eyes, with all the wonder of the new, including evidence of poverty they’ve never before encountered. The older boy (age 11), in particular, has a unique way of clinically interpreting new experiences through books he’s read, imbuing the world with fantasy. The adventure with the boys is a comedy of errors–Araceli becomes suddenly famous as a symbol of racial politics, and her fate depends upon forces outside her control.

The Barbarian Nurseries is a beautifully written, contemplative and thought-provoking view into Southern California’s diversity and contradictions, as well as a fascinating and well-presented story.


This review originally ran in the September 27, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!


Y’all! One of the best books I’ve read this year! Rush out there and get it!!

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence


Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
I went into this one largely blind. I knew it was a classic, and I knew that its contemporary public found it obscene, even pornographic. But I didn’t know what to expect in the way of style or plot content.

So I’ll begin as if you’re in that same boat. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is set in England, in the years immediately following World War I. (I have found myself reading quite a few books, fiction and non, set in interwar Britain this year; I’m becoming pretty comfortable with this setting.) Our protagonist is a girl named Constance, who has a love affair as a teen while touring in France, but is called home when the war begins. She marries a young man named Clifford Chatterley while he’s on leave; the marriage does not appear to be particularly well thought through. Thus Connie becomes Lady Chatterley. When Clifford returns from the war, he first has to convalesce, and then they move together into his family seat, called Wragby – with Clifford paralyzed from the waist down, impotent, and wheelchair-bound.

To begin with, Connie had a larger, stronger personality than his. Now especially she is tied down, and in the dismal, closed-in environment that is Wragby, bordered by coal mines and their socially inferior, dirty, mean inhabitants. Clifford was arguably never fit to satisfy her, sexually, intellectually, or emotionally; his handicap now finishes that question.

In her malaise and misery, Connie takes a lover, briefly: Michaelis is a playwright, not really socially acceptable but moneyed, and therefore made semi-welcome at Wragby. This affair is not entirely satisfying, though, and following a particular sexual faux pas, Connie cuts him off.

For some time, then, she drags around Wragby, at first caring for Clifford dutifully, but eventually tiring and beginning to like him less. The main action of the book I shall try not to spoil for you, if you have managed to not know for this long. (I didn’t know, and had the pleasure of learning as I read.) But I will tell you that Clifford encourages Connie to get pregnant if she can, and assures her that he’ll acknowledge her child.

I found this book engrossing, after I got used to the style. Lawrence uses colons in odd ways, and with gusto, sprinkling them liberally. It took me a little while to get used to, and I continued to note his colons with amusement. More than punctuation, though, there is a sort of rolling rhythm to the narrative that I had to adjust to; it was lovely once I got going, but just different enough from what I’ve been reading lately to cause a change in pace. I wish I knew better how to Talk Lit and explain what I mean; I’m assuming there’s a term for the style; all I can say is, many classics or older novels have a style and a rhythm that I recognized here and that is different from modern releases.

The voice is third-person but shifts perspectives so that we see out from inside the heads of Connie and of her eponymous lover. There is dialect! I do like dialects, if I can understand them at all, and what they reflect; here, the dialects of various characters reflect social class, which is an important element of the book. One of the ongoing conflicts that Connie and Clifford experience is over social class; Clifford is accustomed to being one of the ruling class and assumes that that is as it should be, while Connie is a little more open-minded. There is discussion of socialism.

The larger theme, however, is a body-vs-mind question. In her youth, Connie and her sister Hilda were stimulated by the intellect of the young men they loved, and Connie continues to share activities of the mind with Clifford at least through the first half of the book. He becomes a fairly successful author, and she assists him in writing stories that make money but are not “important.” Clifford has several old friends – “the cronies” – who come by and have discussions, occasionally including Connie. As the story goes on, though, she finds that stimulating her mind is not enough; she needs to live a physical life, too, and Clifford could never offer her that.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover reminded me very much of Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. All three describe industry and its workings as if they are characters, animate. In this case, the local coal mines, which Clifford owns and becomes increasingly interested and involved in managing, are a force almost of nature. Their dirt and noise dominate Wragby and depress Connie; work in the coal mines defines several generations of men, and the threat that the mines will close is part of the terror and change of the new post-war England.

This was a beautiful book and I enjoyed it. Connie’s uncomfortable, unfulfilled position and struggle to find herself reminded me, in turn, of Katie Chopin’s The Awakening. It’s an important story to tell, and to read. It’s beautifully written.

But, you ask, what about the SEX?! Okay, I’ll tell you. First of all, the “obscene” and “pornographic” nature of this book is said to have diminished over time, but I still raised my eyebrows several times. There is very frank discussion of body parts, orgasms, and the various ways of achieving them; characters name their genitalia and call them by various terms not considered polite. Despite our new and jaded comfort with sex this is not a PG-rated book. But I thought it was well-done and fairly realistic, and I found several scenes of sexual frankness between lovers who really didn’t know each other very well, that suggest an openness we still haven’t entirely achieved.

Perhaps more shocking to me than the sex talk was the talk of affairs and illegitimate children. Not only Clifford, but Connie’s father, and various well-meaning bystanders comment on Connie not looking very healthy or happy, and recommend that she take a lover, even have a child by another man – they suggest this to her, even occasionally to him. It is taken fairly matter-of-factly. This, to me, was more outlandish than the sex. It’s not hard to see why the 1920’s world rejected this book as inappropriate; it’s still being challenged today all over the country. But as usual in dealing with banned books, I say let the individual decide. If you don’t like reading about body parts, steer clear. But this is a fine book, and you’d be missing something.