Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good start, a little dreary in the middle but a very strong finish. What I expected was a raunchy rompfest from start to finish, as I opened the book initially with trepidation, not because I’m some sort of pervert (this is an exercise left to the reader) but because of the hand clasped over the pudendum, on this edition’s front cover. I was somewhat surprised to find, that this risqué caricature wasn’t entirely accurate. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t somewhat graphic sex depictions or rather blue language but it wasn’t to the extent or in the manner I was expecting. Think Mellors ejaculating and feeling Connie up, the author makes excellent use of euphemism. Lawrence writes expertly towing the line between sensuality and obscenity. Though, for the time you can see why it was banned in Britain.

Impressively, the characters have quite contemporary ideas about society which were very forward thinking for the time and have become normalised in today’s age, to a certain extent. Such as, attitudes to sex and society. I did find the gamekeeper hard to understand and his broad Derbyshire dialect was quite annoying for that reason, though it was quite droll in someplaces. Personally, the setting does have a connexion [sic] to me and it was quite interesting for that reason. Lawrence does serve up a double bluff in that, Lady Chatterley has two lovers, just as you think she’ll be forever carrying on with Michaelis. The parts where Mellors and Connie are together were especially enjoyable to read. The widespread use of French was annoying, as these words were not in my dictionary, like with Moab is my Washpot.

“Tha’s got the nicest arse of anybody. It’s the nicest, nicest woman’s arse as is!

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