What do you think?
Rate this book
مختارات من القصص القصيرة
تمثل هذه الباقة المختارة من القصص القصيرة للروائى الشهير د.هـ. لورنس تنوعًا واسعًا للموضوعات التى تناولها ، وتعبر فى الوقت نفسه عن مراحل تطوره كاتبًا. كانت قصصه الولى تمثل فى اغلبها تجارب شخصية ، كقصة " أطياف الربيع" التى صور فيها تجربته العاطفية ، فى حين تبدت أفكاره الخاصة بطبيعة الحياة الإنسانية فى قصصه الأخيرة ، كما يتضح فى قصة " المرأة التى رحلت بعيدا" وفوق كل شئ ، فهذه القصص تعكس معتقداته المتعلقة بالقوى المدمرة فى المجتمع الحديث ، وتأثيرها الشديد على علاقات الحب بين الرجل والمرأة
353 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 1971
42 people are currently reading
1436 people want to read
About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,086 books4,179 followersDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
November 6, 2022
What surprised and appealed most about the two dozen stories gathered here, spanning Lawrence’s writing life, was their variety - of style, subject, genre, language, and atmosphere. They are too diverse to read many in quick succession. Conversely, reading them with only a short gap between stories reveals recurring themes.
Unloving mothers
The most common motif is that of parents, particularly mothers, who don’t or can’t love their children. They are not wicked caricatures. They are solicitous - sometimes excessively - in ensuring that practical needs are met: food, clothes, education. But what happiness or reassurance can there be when all you really crave is a kind word, a tender touch, and above all, empathy and love?
One little boy is “a torment of responsibility”, though his mother is probably suffering from post-natal depression. Another couple:
“Had one little boy, whom they loved as parents should love their children, but whom they wisely refrained from fastening upon, to build their lives on him. No, no, they must have their own lives!”
Even an apparently loving mother tells her adult son, about his unplanned existence:
“You were lucky. It was my misfortune”
and proceeds to tell him what a burden he has always been.
In the worst cases, a parent’s inability to love triggers madness and mortality in a parent or child.
Class bound(aries)
Lawrence was a working class lad who joined the literati. He was on the periphery of the Bloomsbury set, though often critical of it. He must have been conscious of the boundaries he had breached. Maybe he doubted his own achievement: Hadrian, in the story “You Touched Me” was adopted and:
“Matilda had longed to make a gentleman of him, but he refused to be made.”
Many characters here are acutely aware of, and often constrained by the rigidity of class and consequent expectations. As an adult, Hadrian goes to Canada to escape the burden of his humble roots as a “charity boy”.
Money matters most when you don’t have enough to maintain your position in society. That’s at the cold heart of “The Rocking Horse Winner”. But those who have both position and money are not much freer, despite their sometimes smug superiority.
There is potential tragedy for those who cannot consider marrying beneath themselves. For them, spinsterdom lurks: a ghost of the future they can see, but not exorcise.
Oxymorons - or merely contrasts?
Lawrence loves counter-intuitive imagery: cold fire, dark flames, black blood, blue sun. Most of all, he often asserts that hate is inextricably part of love.
Marriage for the wrong reasons, awful reasons
Some of the marriages here made me uncomfortable. Perhaps this is where the age of the book shows.
People, real and fictional, past and present, marry for all sorts of reasons, some more noble than others. Who am I to judge (assuming I even know the truth)?
A marriage of convenience is morally neutral, as long as both parties understand the terms. Settling for "Second Best" (the actual title of one of the stories) may be a lot better than nothing - or else slow tragedy for all involved (in this collection, I think there’s some of each).
Nevertheless, comparing sexual arousal with sleep by saying “If you wake a man up, he can’t go to sleep again” sounds rather like justifying date rape on the basis a man cannot stop once he’s started. Even worse, that story has a (hideous, implausible) “happy” ending.
The grass is always greener
When aspiration and desire become insatiable, present pleasure becomes impossible. Madness can result.
This is the explicit message of several of the stories, and a possible outcome for protagonists in some of the others.
“Be careful what you wish for”, as the saying goes.
Blue
The first story that I read (not the first in the book), “Sun”, was notable for the ubiquity of blue. Not just expected hues of eyes, sea, sky, and clothes, but particularly the blue of the sun, light, and flames: the sun’s “blue pulsing roundness, whose outer edges streamed brilliance. Pulsing with marvellous blue, and alive… He faced down to her with blue body of fire.” Another time, facing a human man:
“The blue fire running through her… the fire flowing between them like the blue streaming fire from the heart of the sun.”
Maybe that primed me, but blue leaped off the pages, Lawrence’s words, licking my eyes with warm-cool flames. I was consumed in a benign and sometimes sensuous conflagration.
In contrast, “Fanny and Annie” was burnished red by the town furnaces:
“The red lights flared over the deepening darkness.”
Eyes
The colour, clarity, and changing mood of eyes are frequently mentioned and always significant, sometimes unsubtly so. This is especially obvious in "The Fox"; my review (link below) lists many examples.
Exclamation marks!
Lawrence is sometimes exuberant with exclamation marks, to an extent that twenty first century grammar mavens often criticise. I’m no maven.
Reviews of individual stories
I’ve tried to reflect the range stories in the ones I’ve chosen to review individually:
Sun, 5*
Sensual awakening from carnal communing with the sun.
Things, 4*
Satire about trying to reject materialism and live for beauty.
The Man Who Loved Islands, 4*
A fairy tale study of obsession.
Love Among the Haystacks, 4*
Harvesting cherries.
The Rocking Horse Winner, 4*.
A ghostless ghost story.
The Fox, 3*.
Happiness is unattainable.
The Ladybird, 4*.
Floral, fiery, animal, earthy passion.
Odour of Chrysanthemums, 3*.
An evening in the pit village of the same colliery that DHL's father worked at.
Image sources
Pages of book taking flight:
http://lateralaction.com/base/media/p...
Child with disappearing parents:
https://beyondtheborderlinepersonalit...
Frost Report class sketch - image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_s...
Frost Report class sketch - to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k1i...
Balance money and heart:
http://dj9frc12kq0lk.cloudfront.net/s...
Green and brown grass:
http://www.jongordon.com/blog/wp-cont...
Blue flames:
http://images.clipartpanda.com/blue-f...
Unloving mothers
The most common motif is that of parents, particularly mothers, who don’t or can’t love their children. They are not wicked caricatures. They are solicitous - sometimes excessively - in ensuring that practical needs are met: food, clothes, education. But what happiness or reassurance can there be when all you really crave is a kind word, a tender touch, and above all, empathy and love?
One little boy is “a torment of responsibility”, though his mother is probably suffering from post-natal depression. Another couple:
“Had one little boy, whom they loved as parents should love their children, but whom they wisely refrained from fastening upon, to build their lives on him. No, no, they must have their own lives!”
Even an apparently loving mother tells her adult son, about his unplanned existence:
“You were lucky. It was my misfortune”
and proceeds to tell him what a burden he has always been.
In the worst cases, a parent’s inability to love triggers madness and mortality in a parent or child.
Class bound(aries)
Lawrence was a working class lad who joined the literati. He was on the periphery of the Bloomsbury set, though often critical of it. He must have been conscious of the boundaries he had breached. Maybe he doubted his own achievement: Hadrian, in the story “You Touched Me” was adopted and:
“Matilda had longed to make a gentleman of him, but he refused to be made.”
Many characters here are acutely aware of, and often constrained by the rigidity of class and consequent expectations. As an adult, Hadrian goes to Canada to escape the burden of his humble roots as a “charity boy”.
Money matters most when you don’t have enough to maintain your position in society. That’s at the cold heart of “The Rocking Horse Winner”. But those who have both position and money are not much freer, despite their sometimes smug superiority.
There is potential tragedy for those who cannot consider marrying beneath themselves. For them, spinsterdom lurks: a ghost of the future they can see, but not exorcise.
Oxymorons - or merely contrasts?
Lawrence loves counter-intuitive imagery: cold fire, dark flames, black blood, blue sun. Most of all, he often asserts that hate is inextricably part of love.
Marriage for the wrong reasons, awful reasons
Some of the marriages here made me uncomfortable. Perhaps this is where the age of the book shows.
People, real and fictional, past and present, marry for all sorts of reasons, some more noble than others. Who am I to judge (assuming I even know the truth)?
A marriage of convenience is morally neutral, as long as both parties understand the terms. Settling for "Second Best" (the actual title of one of the stories) may be a lot better than nothing - or else slow tragedy for all involved (in this collection, I think there’s some of each).
Nevertheless, comparing sexual arousal with sleep by saying “If you wake a man up, he can’t go to sleep again” sounds rather like justifying date rape on the basis a man cannot stop once he’s started. Even worse, that story has a (hideous, implausible) “happy” ending.
The grass is always greener
When aspiration and desire become insatiable, present pleasure becomes impossible. Madness can result.
This is the explicit message of several of the stories, and a possible outcome for protagonists in some of the others.
“Be careful what you wish for”, as the saying goes.
Blue
The first story that I read (not the first in the book), “Sun”, was notable for the ubiquity of blue. Not just expected hues of eyes, sea, sky, and clothes, but particularly the blue of the sun, light, and flames: the sun’s “blue pulsing roundness, whose outer edges streamed brilliance. Pulsing with marvellous blue, and alive… He faced down to her with blue body of fire.” Another time, facing a human man:
“The blue fire running through her… the fire flowing between them like the blue streaming fire from the heart of the sun.”
Maybe that primed me, but blue leaped off the pages, Lawrence’s words, licking my eyes with warm-cool flames. I was consumed in a benign and sometimes sensuous conflagration.
In contrast, “Fanny and Annie” was burnished red by the town furnaces:
“The red lights flared over the deepening darkness.”
Eyes
The colour, clarity, and changing mood of eyes are frequently mentioned and always significant, sometimes unsubtly so. This is especially obvious in "The Fox"; my review (link below) lists many examples.
Exclamation marks!
Lawrence is sometimes exuberant with exclamation marks, to an extent that twenty first century grammar mavens often criticise. I’m no maven.
Reviews of individual stories
I’ve tried to reflect the range stories in the ones I’ve chosen to review individually:
Sun, 5*
Sensual awakening from carnal communing with the sun.
Things, 4*
Satire about trying to reject materialism and live for beauty.
The Man Who Loved Islands, 4*
A fairy tale study of obsession.
Love Among the Haystacks, 4*
Harvesting cherries.
The Rocking Horse Winner, 4*.
A ghostless ghost story.
The Fox, 3*.
Happiness is unattainable.
The Ladybird, 4*.
Floral, fiery, animal, earthy passion.
Odour of Chrysanthemums, 3*.
An evening in the pit village of the same colliery that DHL's father worked at.
Image sources
Pages of book taking flight:
http://lateralaction.com/base/media/p...
Child with disappearing parents:
https://beyondtheborderlinepersonalit...
Frost Report class sketch - image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_s...
Frost Report class sketch - to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k1i...
Balance money and heart:
http://dj9frc12kq0lk.cloudfront.net/s...
Green and brown grass:
http://www.jongordon.com/blog/wp-cont...
Blue flames:
http://images.clipartpanda.com/blue-f...
April 28, 2021
قصص للأديب البريطاني ديفيد هربرت لورنس
واحد من أشهر كُتاب بريطانيا في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين
كتاباته أثارت جدل باعتبارها جريئة وغير مألوفة في ذلك الوقت
القصص متنوعة, أحداثها في الريف بين المزارعين وعُمال المناجم والطبقات الاجتماعية البسيطة
يربط بينها صور للعلاقة بين الرجل والمرأة في أشكال ومراحل مختلفة في الحياة
لورنس بارع في الكتابة عن الصراع الداخلي للشخصيات ولحظات الاختيار
المشاعر المُترددة المخفية وراء الاصطناع والتظاهُر وقيود المجتمع
الأسلوب سلس والترجمة جميلة نقلت أجواء القصص بدقة وبساطة
واحد من أشهر كُتاب بريطانيا في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين
كتاباته أثارت جدل باعتبارها جريئة وغير مألوفة في ذلك الوقت
القصص متنوعة, أحداثها في الريف بين المزارعين وعُمال المناجم والطبقات الاجتماعية البسيطة
يربط بينها صور للعلاقة بين الرجل والمرأة في أشكال ومراحل مختلفة في الحياة
لورنس بارع في الكتابة عن الصراع الداخلي للشخصيات ولحظات الاختيار
المشاعر المُترددة المخفية وراء الاصطناع والتظاهُر وقيود المجتمع
الأسلوب سلس والترجمة جميلة نقلت أجواء القصص بدقة وبساطة
January 13, 2008
great for reading in the bath
August 25, 2013
I remember, when I read Sons and Lovers as a 17 year old, thinking that D H Lawrence was a genius. There were times in these stories that I felt the same, or something similar at least, but at other points I could understand why many people have found him so annoying. He clearly had various difficult, even openly hostile, relationships in his life, but sometimes the way he describes them is so tangential that you forget that there are real people involved. At worst, Lawrence just repeats himself, banging on like some old drunk who's not making sense.
Still, short story collections inevitably include good and bad examples of a writer’s ability, and Lawrence’s writing is still remarkably vivid at points. It perhaps works best when his dialogue – usually heavily accented – can cut through to ground the narrative he is telling.
Still, short story collections inevitably include good and bad examples of a writer’s ability, and Lawrence’s writing is still remarkably vivid at points. It perhaps works best when his dialogue – usually heavily accented – can cut through to ground the narrative he is telling.
April 26, 2022
So I went into reading this with an open mind…really…I did. Well I tried to. This is supposed to be a collection of Lawrence’s best short stories and so I was hoping to enjoy at least a couple of them. To be fair, unlike some of the other collected stories of his works, at least there is a range of subject matter here so it is not merely a series of pictures about the mining community or the portrayal of marriage gone wrong. So if you must buy one collection of Lawrence stories, this is probably the one. However, to be honest, don’t bother! Even Louise Welsh in her excellent introduction (and the introduction and background notes and glossary in this novel are the best thing about it) admits that there has been a general ‘vilification’ of Lawrence over the years and quite frankly, there is good reason for this.
One of the best things I have read about Lawrence is included in this introduction from a resident in his hometown: ‘We kicked him out o’ Eastwood and we kicked him out o’ England. We want no more of him here.’
I can see that Lawrence is a good writer: his poetic prose and the descriptive detail in many of the stories is often really evocative. However, the problem ultimately lies in the stories themselves and the subject matter. Here are just a few of the many issues I have with Lawrence:
1. As a writer, I really believe that you should write about something you are passionate about; something you care about. Lawrence appears to choose the opposite tact. He almost deliberately chooses to write about the things he loathes. It is clear he is sneering at the miners even as he depicts their struggles in ‘A Miner at Home’; it is evident that he views society women as frivolous fools in ‘The White Stocking’; it is abundantly clear that he condemns the materialism of the wealthy in ‘Things’
2. His portrayal of women can only really be described as misogynistic at best. Elsie is described as a ‘delightful little creature’ who ‘did not think about her husband’ and was ‘entirely trivial’; the wife in ‘England, my England’ is ‘like weapon against him, fierce with talons of iron, to push him out of the nest place he had made’ and in the ‘Horse Dealer’s Daughter’ the brothers openly refer to their sister as ‘the sulkiest bitch that ever trod!’ Lawrence repeatedly portrays women who are unsympathetic; who are superficial; callous; destroy their men folk; make their men and themselves unhappy; are the drudges of their male counterparts; use their looks as weapons; seduce men when they need to and then throw them aside and make marriage an unwholesome and disturbing bed of discontentment. Nice!
3. Lawrence has mummy issues! Is there anything more pathetic in a man? The mother in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ ‘had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust on her, and she could not love them’ – her money grabbing desperation effectively drives her small son insane. The mother in ‘Sun’ considers her son and thinks ‘he should not be such a lump!’ and her solution is to take him sun bathing with her naked in a fashion that can only be described as Oedipal. Families only seem even relatively functional when the mother has had the good graces to die!
4. Lawrence on the one hand seems to resent those who come from his own class and background for not bettering themselves. In ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ the miner it seems deserves to die because his absence is not noted as he is always at the pub! Yet at the same time, he equally resents those who have money and presents them as superficial and money grabbing such as the woman in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ who allows her house to ring with the incantation ‘There must be more money’ or the couple in ‘Things’ who accumulate possessions and then cannot accommodate them but desperately cling to them in storage anyway. Either way, Lawrence seems to position himself as above everyone seeing himself as intrinsically superior, more moral and ethical and this scathing attitude is unpleasant and infuses his work.
5. One can’t help resent the manner in which Lawrence also uses his own life and even those who should be viewed as his friends as source material for his stories. This would be fine if a) the connection were not so blatantly obvious and b) if the portrayals were not so cruel. For instance, ‘Things’ is based on the lives of Earl Henry Brewster and his wife and is a fairly searing portrayal of their superficiality; ‘The Man who Loved Islands’ is based on the novelist Compton Mackenzie. Although when Lawrence was accused of this, he rather cruelly responded his character was ‘a much purer and finer character than the vain, shallow, theatrical and somewhat ridiculous Mackenzie’ and ‘England, my England’ is based on the Meynell family who kindly allowed Lawrence to stay with them. Yet despite this, he uses their personal tragedy of their young daughter being crippled in an accident in the narrative and presents the main male character as idle, cowardly, callous and cold. He did come to regret this portrayal though given the fact he narrates the death of the male protagonist only months before Lucas Meynell’s actual death on the front.
6. All I can say here is poor old Frieda – his wife who left her husband to be with the man she believed loved her. What a fool? It is clear that the Lawrence’s marriage was far from happy. Yet once again, Lawrence uses this as useful fodder for his narratives in ‘New Eve and Old Adam’ presenting himself as a the victim, Adam, who is manipulated by his wife. Could there really be any harsher criticism that publicly comparing one’s wife to Eve -the originator of all human sin?
Poor old Frieda and the loathsome Lawrence:
7. Now I know that what has made Lawrence famous is his racy sexual portrayals. As Larkin claims:
‘Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP’
However, Lawrence just doesn’t do it for me. It is all rather crude and unpleasant. Take this as an example: ‘the little etiolated body of her husband, city-branded, would possess her, and his little, frantic penis would beget another child in her. She could not help it.’ Well that is just delightful. I’m sure every man out there is yearning to have his virile member described as a limpid worm! In fact, the only really convincing sexual interactions are those between men. The best story by far in the collection is ‘The Prussian Officer’ where the officer, who has never married ‘now and then took himself a mistress. But after such an event, he returned to duty with his brow still more tense’ – women naturally being most unsatisfactory creatures. However, he is riled to fury by his obvious physical attraction to his orderly.
8. The stories just aren’t, in the majority, very good. They are dull – very little happens. In ‘Adolf’ a wild rabbit is caught and then later released when he gets a bit…wild. With a couple of exceptions, they are really rather tedious and unpleasant character vignettes.
9. Last and not least, is his obvious casual racism: Paula, ‘a Pole’ in ‘Love Among the Haystacks’ is a ‘wild cat’ whose foreign qualities make her both sexually free and immediately dismissed by those around her. Similarly, the n word is casually dropped on more than one occasion. Now I know Lawrence was writing in a very different context to our own, but I still find it objectionable.
So…in short. This collection is just not very good and often outright reprehensible.
One of the best things I have read about Lawrence is included in this introduction from a resident in his hometown: ‘We kicked him out o’ Eastwood and we kicked him out o’ England. We want no more of him here.’
I can see that Lawrence is a good writer: his poetic prose and the descriptive detail in many of the stories is often really evocative. However, the problem ultimately lies in the stories themselves and the subject matter. Here are just a few of the many issues I have with Lawrence:
1. As a writer, I really believe that you should write about something you are passionate about; something you care about. Lawrence appears to choose the opposite tact. He almost deliberately chooses to write about the things he loathes. It is clear he is sneering at the miners even as he depicts their struggles in ‘A Miner at Home’; it is evident that he views society women as frivolous fools in ‘The White Stocking’; it is abundantly clear that he condemns the materialism of the wealthy in ‘Things’
2. His portrayal of women can only really be described as misogynistic at best. Elsie is described as a ‘delightful little creature’ who ‘did not think about her husband’ and was ‘entirely trivial’; the wife in ‘England, my England’ is ‘like weapon against him, fierce with talons of iron, to push him out of the nest place he had made’ and in the ‘Horse Dealer’s Daughter’ the brothers openly refer to their sister as ‘the sulkiest bitch that ever trod!’ Lawrence repeatedly portrays women who are unsympathetic; who are superficial; callous; destroy their men folk; make their men and themselves unhappy; are the drudges of their male counterparts; use their looks as weapons; seduce men when they need to and then throw them aside and make marriage an unwholesome and disturbing bed of discontentment. Nice!
3. Lawrence has mummy issues! Is there anything more pathetic in a man? The mother in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ ‘had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust on her, and she could not love them’ – her money grabbing desperation effectively drives her small son insane. The mother in ‘Sun’ considers her son and thinks ‘he should not be such a lump!’ and her solution is to take him sun bathing with her naked in a fashion that can only be described as Oedipal. Families only seem even relatively functional when the mother has had the good graces to die!
4. Lawrence on the one hand seems to resent those who come from his own class and background for not bettering themselves. In ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ the miner it seems deserves to die because his absence is not noted as he is always at the pub! Yet at the same time, he equally resents those who have money and presents them as superficial and money grabbing such as the woman in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ who allows her house to ring with the incantation ‘There must be more money’ or the couple in ‘Things’ who accumulate possessions and then cannot accommodate them but desperately cling to them in storage anyway. Either way, Lawrence seems to position himself as above everyone seeing himself as intrinsically superior, more moral and ethical and this scathing attitude is unpleasant and infuses his work.
5. One can’t help resent the manner in which Lawrence also uses his own life and even those who should be viewed as his friends as source material for his stories. This would be fine if a) the connection were not so blatantly obvious and b) if the portrayals were not so cruel. For instance, ‘Things’ is based on the lives of Earl Henry Brewster and his wife and is a fairly searing portrayal of their superficiality; ‘The Man who Loved Islands’ is based on the novelist Compton Mackenzie. Although when Lawrence was accused of this, he rather cruelly responded his character was ‘a much purer and finer character than the vain, shallow, theatrical and somewhat ridiculous Mackenzie’ and ‘England, my England’ is based on the Meynell family who kindly allowed Lawrence to stay with them. Yet despite this, he uses their personal tragedy of their young daughter being crippled in an accident in the narrative and presents the main male character as idle, cowardly, callous and cold. He did come to regret this portrayal though given the fact he narrates the death of the male protagonist only months before Lucas Meynell’s actual death on the front.
6. All I can say here is poor old Frieda – his wife who left her husband to be with the man she believed loved her. What a fool? It is clear that the Lawrence’s marriage was far from happy. Yet once again, Lawrence uses this as useful fodder for his narratives in ‘New Eve and Old Adam’ presenting himself as a the victim, Adam, who is manipulated by his wife. Could there really be any harsher criticism that publicly comparing one’s wife to Eve -the originator of all human sin?
Poor old Frieda and the loathsome Lawrence:
7. Now I know that what has made Lawrence famous is his racy sexual portrayals. As Larkin claims:
‘Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP’
However, Lawrence just doesn’t do it for me. It is all rather crude and unpleasant. Take this as an example: ‘the little etiolated body of her husband, city-branded, would possess her, and his little, frantic penis would beget another child in her. She could not help it.’ Well that is just delightful. I’m sure every man out there is yearning to have his virile member described as a limpid worm! In fact, the only really convincing sexual interactions are those between men. The best story by far in the collection is ‘The Prussian Officer’ where the officer, who has never married ‘now and then took himself a mistress. But after such an event, he returned to duty with his brow still more tense’ – women naturally being most unsatisfactory creatures. However, he is riled to fury by his obvious physical attraction to his orderly.
8. The stories just aren’t, in the majority, very good. They are dull – very little happens. In ‘Adolf’ a wild rabbit is caught and then later released when he gets a bit…wild. With a couple of exceptions, they are really rather tedious and unpleasant character vignettes.
9. Last and not least, is his obvious casual racism: Paula, ‘a Pole’ in ‘Love Among the Haystacks’ is a ‘wild cat’ whose foreign qualities make her both sexually free and immediately dismissed by those around her. Similarly, the n word is casually dropped on more than one occasion. Now I know Lawrence was writing in a very different context to our own, but I still find it objectionable.
So…in short. This collection is just not very good and often outright reprehensible.
March 12, 2023
A collection of short stories that were written in different times of D.H Lawrence's life, one of England's most significant authors in the 20th century. He was a novelist, poet, playwright, critic as well as a painter. One of my favourite picks from this book was: "Odour of Chrysanthemums".
December 7, 2009
I love short stories and hunt them out by all my favorite authors. D.H. Lawrence surely is at the top of this list, and at the top of his game with these beauties. They gleam in the candlelight with the same richness as polished wood.
October 22, 2008
He was a great short story writer - better than (most of) his novels I think.
July 28, 2011
Some stories were more appealing than others.
April 5, 2018
مجموعة قصصية مميزة للغاية تدور أغلب أحداثها في الريف الأنجليزي بين عمال المناجم و النساء المهمشات. أسلوب الكاتب سلس و هادئ و يهتم بالتفاصيل كثيرا مما يزيد القصص جمالا. أكثر ما شد انتباهي هو وجود "النار" في كل القصص تقريبا فمرة يستخدمها الكاتب ليصنع حالة من الدفء و الامان للقارئ كما لبطل القصة و مرة أخري تكون رمزا للموت، و هكذا تختلف رمزيتها من قصة لأخري أو من موقف لآخر في إطار نفس القصة.
استمتعت كثيرا بقراءة تلك الأعمال رغم شعوري قليلا بالملل في البداية.
استمتعت كثيرا بقراءة تلك الأعمال رغم شعوري قليلا بالملل في البداية.
February 9, 2023
Odour of Chrysanthemums - 3.5⭐
November 25, 2010
In one of the stories from this wonderful compendium, The Man Who Loved Islands, Lawrence has incorporated several themes and many layers of meaning all in less that twenty-five pages. The man who "loved islands" appears Quixotic as he attempts to create an imaginary island world around himself as he sequesters his being in his book-laden library to write about the birds of the classical world. But his dreams were quickly corroded as the corruption of humanity tainted his imaginary Eden. Suggestions of Milton's Paradise Lost - yet can Satan have corrupted humanity so thoroughly that few are honest or loyal enough to continue the journey with the man?
Imaginary though it was it reminded me of Rousseau's attacks on civilization while he wrote of an imaginary state of nature. This state of nature seemed to be close to the reincarnation of our man's island as he tried yet a second time to accomplish his dream. Ultimately the man who loved islands inherits a nightmare as the story veers into a snowy dystopia. What meaning does this hold for the reader? I am not sure, but the thoughts for which this story and others (The Rocking Horse Winner is another favorite) is a catalyst will continually remind me of this strange world.
Imaginary though it was it reminded me of Rousseau's attacks on civilization while he wrote of an imaginary state of nature. This state of nature seemed to be close to the reincarnation of our man's island as he tried yet a second time to accomplish his dream. Ultimately the man who loved islands inherits a nightmare as the story veers into a snowy dystopia. What meaning does this hold for the reader? I am not sure, but the thoughts for which this story and others (The Rocking Horse Winner is another favorite) is a catalyst will continually remind me of this strange world.
November 22, 2019
It's taken me a couple of months to read this book and I daresay Lawrence is a reasonably good writer if a little repetitive in his phrasing and motifs. I felt many of the stories to be overlong and overwritten, but I appreciate he was a writer of his time and made the necessary allowances. In general terms, I confess the themes weren't for me: largely domestic rural dramas, simmering understated emotions, and characters confined by class. If I were to pick a few favourites they would be "The Prussian Officer" (whose moral dilemma pales into insignificance after a tragic accident), "Sun" (about sloughing convention) and "The Man Who Loved Islands" (great title - perhaps initially too jocular in tone, but ultimately a good story about a desperate desire for loneliness which I could totally relate to). Glancing down the list of titles I barely remember some of the other tales, although "The Woman Who Rode Away" felt borderline racist in its depiction of an American Indian tribe. However, the stories are a product of their time and whilst nothing set me on fire, I can't say that I didn't enjoy reading it.
July 4, 2014
Each of the stories in this collection (selected from Lawrence's first collection of short stories, published in 1914) is a complex and insightful examination of a different facet of the experience of love--mainly, erotic love, but also the love (or frustration thereof) between parents and children. If you like a happy ending, or like stories in which love is a source primarily of redemption and happiness, you won't like this collection. The characters variously act out of wisdom and self-delusion, struggle with self-hatred and jealousy, hurt themselves and the people they love, struggle to understand their own motivations, lose themselves in desire or forfeit their chances for passion, experience excruciating loss, and confront the fact that the people closest to us are, ultimately, unknown to us. For all that, the collection is not grim: love is painful in these stories, but the characters capable of introspection can find self-knowledge and, sometimes, fulfillment.
June 14, 2012
Selected Short Stories by D.H. Lawrence, wrote a book that talks about adult situations and life problems and in all the chapters it's setting was in the United Kingdom (U.K) a guys mother had died and his last word to her was "mother!, should i go to work" and her last word was yes. then on the same day after her son left for work his mother had died. This had left the son in a depression stage where he was losing himself. This book is very detailed has big vocabulary and I recommend this book for intermediate and adult readers because some contents in this book may not be suitable for children
May 10, 2013
It was interesting to refresh myself on some classic D. H. Lawrence. If you're strictly reading this as a period piece, most of the stories are quite humorous, even when they're not 'humorous'. But since I'm a product of my generation, I can still enjoy a number of the stories on their own merit, but the way women are treated in others just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Of course, it then behooves me to read deeper into the milieu and see that, in fact, this author really does respect women, as far as it goes and despite his stormy relationship. I really ought to read a lot more of his works to be fair.
August 16, 2016
I am continually surprised by how much I am enjoying my modernism texts next year (I hope it continues for Ulysses!)
I have been wanting to read D.H. Lawrence for a while (mainly after seeing Richard Madden topless in Lady Chatterley's Lover...) but I did not know if I would enjoy the short stories. I was pleasantly surprised. While I was not a fan of 'The Man Who Loves Islands' as much, I loved 'Love Among The Haystacks' and 'The White Stocking'. While I did not read all of these (although most of them) for my course, I am definitely going to give the rest a go in the near future, and try Lady Chatterley.
I have been wanting to read D.H. Lawrence for a while (mainly after seeing Richard Madden topless in Lady Chatterley's Lover...) but I did not know if I would enjoy the short stories. I was pleasantly surprised. While I was not a fan of 'The Man Who Loves Islands' as much, I loved 'Love Among The Haystacks' and 'The White Stocking'. While I did not read all of these (although most of them) for my course, I am definitely going to give the rest a go in the near future, and try Lady Chatterley.
May 16, 2024
Selected Short Stories (1914) of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
I would give this an average rating of 3.71 rounded to four stars. There were six stories that were solid four-star quality (The Prussian Officer, The Shadow in the Rose Gardon, The White Stocking, Daughters of the Vicar, The Christening, and Odour of Chrysanthemums). Second Best (sadly not the second-best story of this collection) I would give two stars.
I would give this an average rating of 3.71 rounded to four stars. There were six stories that were solid four-star quality (The Prussian Officer, The Shadow in the Rose Gardon, The White Stocking, Daughters of the Vicar, The Christening, and Odour of Chrysanthemums). Second Best (sadly not the second-best story of this collection) I would give two stars.
May 29, 2015
I have had this book on my kindle for some time and am happy I had the time to read it. There are different stories in here which open the view to understand the relationship between men and women and the tragedy which is sometimes love. I think my favorite of the stories is Daughters of the Vickar.
January 26, 2020
superb.
May 29, 2020
I picked this Penguin Classics ‘D. H. Lawrence Selected Stories’ off my shelf looking for something lighter during this time of Covid-19. On reading it I realized this was a University text I had read parts of twenty years ago. ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ I remember like yesterday. It is the closest I remember Lawrence coming to a supernatural subject.
I am working on my short story writing during this pandemic lock-down, so reading shorts is a marvelous way to learn from the masters. If Lawrence was not famous for his novels, his short stories alone would make him an important author.
I enjoyed these stories. Some are sad, like ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’. I have read quite a bit of Lawrence, but never had seen death of the miners addressed. It must have been too common.
The sudden falling in love of characters, as in ‘Love Among the Haystacks’, was troubling but I suppose common. I laughed at seeing multiple characters named ‘Lydia’, as in ‘The Rainbow’. Lawrence’s mother’s name was Lydia, and she had an enormous impact on him.
Lawrence has been in and out of fashion. I love the very close third person narrative. The thoughts and feelings of these characters are vivid and encompassing. The minds are not always perfectly reasonable, as none of our minds are. We can be petty or obstinate, romantic and ethereal, and sore between extremes. These characters intimately express these feelings in a way I find so incredible and strive to match in my writing. I am reminded of George Eliot, stripped of the decorum. It does not quite match the stream of consciousness from Virginia Woolf, but might be compared to Tolstoy if he didn’t have the Russian censor looking over his shoulder.
I betray myself. Lawrence is my favourite, and I am still thirty-some years after first reading his work, in awe of his talent. Highly recommended.
I am working on my short story writing during this pandemic lock-down, so reading shorts is a marvelous way to learn from the masters. If Lawrence was not famous for his novels, his short stories alone would make him an important author.
I enjoyed these stories. Some are sad, like ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’. I have read quite a bit of Lawrence, but never had seen death of the miners addressed. It must have been too common.
The sudden falling in love of characters, as in ‘Love Among the Haystacks’, was troubling but I suppose common. I laughed at seeing multiple characters named ‘Lydia’, as in ‘The Rainbow’. Lawrence’s mother’s name was Lydia, and she had an enormous impact on him.
Lawrence has been in and out of fashion. I love the very close third person narrative. The thoughts and feelings of these characters are vivid and encompassing. The minds are not always perfectly reasonable, as none of our minds are. We can be petty or obstinate, romantic and ethereal, and sore between extremes. These characters intimately express these feelings in a way I find so incredible and strive to match in my writing. I am reminded of George Eliot, stripped of the decorum. It does not quite match the stream of consciousness from Virginia Woolf, but might be compared to Tolstoy if he didn’t have the Russian censor looking over his shoulder.
I betray myself. Lawrence is my favourite, and I am still thirty-some years after first reading his work, in awe of his talent. Highly recommended.
February 9, 2025
I'm able to appreciate Lawrence as a prose technician a lot more in his short stories. For some reason this was not something in my mind when I was reading his novels. He writes good prose in the novels but the forefront is really the dialogue between characters and the narrative. Lawrence has a tendency to overwrite so I must have just been too hasty to move on to the next page quickly. There are many gems here: Odour, Mortal Coil, Prussian Officer, Things, and of course the rocking horse story.
Much like his novels though, I do somewhat have a lack of enthusiasm for most of his subject matter (small town drama, repressed passions, class divisions etc). However, this is certainly a limitation as a reader on my part and I try to appreciate the writing to the best of my abilities. It's probably this limitation that makes the widely read Odour of Chrysanthemums or Rocking Horse not so memorable for me. Instead what stands out to me most by far is the Prussian Officer. The writing is so outrageously tight and the portrayal of inner conflicts of the two men is something out of Dostoevsky. Brilliant. The closing pages are very Suttree-esque.
Much like his novels though, I do somewhat have a lack of enthusiasm for most of his subject matter (small town drama, repressed passions, class divisions etc). However, this is certainly a limitation as a reader on my part and I try to appreciate the writing to the best of my abilities. It's probably this limitation that makes the widely read Odour of Chrysanthemums or Rocking Horse not so memorable for me. Instead what stands out to me most by far is the Prussian Officer. The writing is so outrageously tight and the portrayal of inner conflicts of the two men is something out of Dostoevsky. Brilliant. The closing pages are very Suttree-esque.
May 2, 2023
Dipped into this here and there. My favourites were the ones that had a sense of jeopardy, and reminded me that when he had the inclination Lawrence could craft a really tense sequence (the drownings in The Rainbow and Women In Love being great examples). “Odour of Chrysanthemums” and “The horse dealer’s daughter” both have quite contrived scenarios where you can easily guess what the resolution will be, but perhaps because they are so straightforward they build to a powerful emotional climax. Some of the other stories, particularly those dealing with marital strife, have sudden and inconclusive endings, which made them rather unmemorable for me.
August 13, 2019
For being a rather famous author, his writing isn't that good. He's very repetitive in his descriptors, and frequently focuses on unimportant details. But I appreciated some of his vocabulary, and his story "The Sun" really resonated with me.
May 9, 2022
I think you need to be a fan of D H Lawrence to get the most from this book. That said and completely contradicting myself it could also be a good introduction to his writing style. I enjoyed these stories as they whisk you away to warm summer days to a time less complicated than today.
November 22, 2022
I'm very fond of reading short stories, Somerset Maugham's, especially. But like James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence does nothing for me. Among the stories here, I only recall The Rocking-Horse Winner, a usual staple in other short story anthologies.
October 25, 2023
Read for a DH Lawrence seminar. I've probably enjoyed reading this the most compared to the other novels and poems we've read for the class, but enjoyment loses its meaning when reading DHL (for me). Sorry to all the Lawrence lovers out there...
March 7, 2021
Enjoyed this.
January 3, 2022
Varied selection
Lawrence is famous for his novels, but these short stories also manifest the particularities of his style and incredible sense of place.
Lawrence is famous for his novels, but these short stories also manifest the particularities of his style and incredible sense of place.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews