The story of a young man unable to fully mature and fall in love because of his mother's tight psychological grip on him. As one reviewer on Amazon put it, "If Paul Morel was a real person who lived in today's world, he'd certainly get invited to a daytime talkshow for being the world's most horrific mama's boy, get booed by the audience for treating Miriam like a dog, and then come back a couple years later via satellite from prison where he'd be doing time for murdering his beloved mother. It would be a ratings bonanza!"

Supposedly semi-autobiographical, though I don't know enough about Lawrence personally to say. At any rate, it's an excellent book to read if you want a good look at class issues of turn-of-the-century England (Lawrence evokes both a fierce love for the simple, earnest lives of the coal miners, and the uncontrollable yearning for something higher - as one character points out, why should being simpler necessarily mean being more genuine?). Written as it was during the era of Freud, it also provides an intimate and often disturbing look at the psychology of an immature young man (immature in the sense that he cannot have a healthy relationship, not in that he's excessively juvenile).

Though D.H. Lawrence is known today as an early writer of erotica, don't read this book looking to be turned on - it's pretty tame by today's standards. Still, many scenes are charged with a subdued and frustrated erotic tension as Paul struggles to come to terms with his feelings. I should also note that you should be able to swallow a fair amount of misogyny in order to read this - women and in particular women who fight for their rights are at times lampooned and belittled.

The book provides an excellent picture of life in that time and place, however, and has long endured as a classic. The Modern Library ranked this book ninth out of the 100 best novels written in the English language in the 20th century. What do you think?

RELEASE NOTES: Behind a pillar in front of the store.