Reading…. D. H. Lawrence

I’ve been reading some recent books, with interesting results. Me Before You by Jojo Mayes unfolds a fascinating tale of a caregiver who develops an ever-deepening relationship with her quadriplegic charge. It turns out to go deeper than one might think. Next Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children had me turning the pages (which is fun in this young adult novel), but ultimately I found myself saying things like “That idea was taken from… (fill in the name of the famous young adult author)”. I also started reading Wichita, which had good reviews. It seemed rather similar to the young adult novel, though, somehow.

With reluctance I turned back to D.H.Lawrence. I say reluctance because I’d put The Rainbow aside simply because I found it cut too near my nerves, even though I’d read it before. The struggles of the characters to understand themselves and each other are so precisely examined that I would put the book down at the end of each day feeling as if I’d had a layer of skin removed, or perhaps as if I’d been flayed.

Lawrence’s book is nearly 100 years old now, but it still surprises me with its insights. Some books are like a walk through the neighborhood – you notice that the house on the corner is up for sale or that the kebab place has changed hands again. Small, very manageable surprises that you don’t have to break stride to notice. Then there’s Lawrence, who reminds us of the things we’ve preferred not to see, and who shows us things we could never have noticed on our own, but which change our lives.

I’ve nothing against easy-to-read. Yet there’s also a place for books that turn us inside out.