Sons and Lovers cover art

Sons and Lovers

Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Sons and Lovers

By: D. H. Lawrence
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £16.22

Buy Now for £16.22

Summary

Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's first major novel, was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long.

When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives. Their second son, Paul, knows that he must struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents' failure. Lawrence's powerful description of Paul's single-minded efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally through relationships with two women---the innocent, old-fashioned Miriam Leivers and the experienced, provocatively modern Clara Dawes---makes this a novel as much for the beginning of the 21st century as it was for the beginning of the 20th.

Public Domain (P)2010 Tantor
Classics Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Fiction Marriage Middle Ages
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
All stars
Most relevant
I read the paper book years ago and it touched my heart. It still is a favorite book of mine and the interpretation is superb. The ending is one of the most intense pieces of literature I know, and a beautiful depiction of the immensity and loneliness of the human condition.

A favorite

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

At the start of the book I was taken with the writing which is excellent throughout and the description of a Nottingham mining village. By the end, I was desperate for it to end and probably won't try another DHL. I didn't like any of the characters and found the endless agonised soul searching mawkish - it reminded me of Dostoyevsky's Bros K. So, not to my taste.
The production and reading were faultless. Vance manfully waded through the accents and the anguish, and only slightly faltered in doing the children.

My first and probably last Lawrence experience

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

My first D H Lawrence. Really impactful being taken back in time to the English Midlands mining industry between Derby and Nottingham through the prism of love, romance, casual (almost matter of a factly) misogyny and domestic abuse, as well as class and oppression. Not to Dickens’, Hardy’s or Eliot’s standards perhaps but worth it nonetheless. Stuart

Social History

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

A good reading of Lawrence classic unabridged. Locations come to life . Characters and dialogue well delineated by the narrator. I would recommend this.

Sons and Lovers

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

It’s worth a listen just for the beautiful use of the English language. Very well narrated too.

What writing and language.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews