Book Beginnings: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Today I am linking up to Book Beginnings hosted by Rose City Reader where readers share the first sentence of the current book they are reading.

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she realized that one must live and learn."

I must confess, I am intrigued by banned books. A banned book deemed a classic...even better. I have previously read D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow but I was not prepared for Lady Chatterley's Lover. The introduction is quite breathtaking in describing the discontentment of the characters. It is easy to see how Lawrence's use of vocabulary in this novel would not have been favored by the masses at the time of its release. In the past few years, many novels have been published with the intent on shocking the reader by detailing what was once deemed romance in explicit detail. However, the themes addressed in Lady Chatterley's Lover set it apart from those current books as it tackles large issues of the time such as the class system and social conflict.

About the Book ( from wikipedia): Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence was first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy, with assistance from Pino Orioli; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen's Mandrake Press in 1929.) The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words. The story is said to have originated from events in Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where he grew up. Lawrence at one time considered calling the novel Tenderness and made significant alterations to the text and story in the process of its composition. It has been published in three versions.

About the Author (from wikipedia): David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works, among other things, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, some of the issues Lawrence explores are emotional health, vitality, spontaneity 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 which he called his "savage pilgrimage."

Happy Reading,

Rebecca

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien



"Upstairs in a bedroom two greyhounds moaned. It was the moan of death. Suddenly I knew that I had to accept the fact that my mother was dead. And I cried as I have never cried at any other time in my life." (Kate, Page 43)

About the Book (from wikipedia.com): Penguin Books, 1960; Kate and Baba are two young Irish country girls who have spent their childhood together. As they leave the safety of their convent school in search of life and love in the big city, they struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship. Kate, dreamy and romantic, yearns for true love, while Baba just wants to experience the life of a single girl. Although they set out to conquer the world together, as their lives take unexpected turns, Kate and Baba must ultimately learn to find their own way.

"Lighthouses blinked and signaled on all sides and I loved watching the rhythm of their flashes, blinking to ships in the lonely sea. They made me think of all the people in the world waiting for all the other people to come to them. For once I was not lonely, because I was with someone that I wanted to be with." (Kate, Page 200)

     My Thoughts: The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien (Plume Publishing, 1960) is a difficult book that you will heartily devour. Difficult because of the always looming tragedy that the reader can instantly sense, as though the characters have no hope of escaping their bleak destinies. This is a tale of a tumultuous friendship between Caithleen "Kate" Brady and Bridget "Baba" Brennan, and the role of women in 1950s Ireland. The Country Girls was originally banned in Ireland when first published due to what was considered, having at the time been considered scandalous as it addressed female sexuality. It is a coming-of-age tale that is processed through into adulthood with no questioning what becomes of these enigmatic characters.
     The first two books are told with Kate as the narrator and detail their beginnings, school years, and then life in Dublin as young women searching for independence while attempting to maintain social acceptance. Kate's life is deeply impacted by the death of her mother while she is a child and her father's alcoholism. She struggles to escape the fate that was dealt to her mother and discovers that she embodies many of the same weaknesses. After she and Baba plan a scheme to be expelled from the convent in which they were studying, Kate's dreams of a higher education are finished, withering her chance at a life different than the women before her.
     The third book is told via Baba, and the reader has the opportunity to view Kate with a new perspective. It is a realistic look at the relationship between husband and wife and the gradual unraveling of a marriage with glimpses at domestic violence, adultery, and controlling behaviors. In The Country Girls, O'Brien presents a sociological portrait of the plight of women and their struggles to not only have their voice heard but to find the voice they wish to project.

nytimes.com

About the Author (from wikipedia.com): Edna O'Brien (born 15 December 1930) is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer. She is considered the "doyenne" of Irish literature.O'Brien's works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men, and to society as a whole. Her first novel, The Country Girls, is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II. The book was banned, burned and denounced from the pulpit, and O'Brien left Ireland behind. O'Brien now lives in London. She received the Irish PEN Award in 2001. Saints and Sinners won the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest prize for a short story collection. Faber and Faber published her memoir, Country Girl, in 2012. 

Happy Reading!

Rebecca

Celebraring the Freedom to Read Banned Books with The Grapes of Wrath

In celebration of Banned Books Week, I am jumping on the Banned Wagon and participating in a promotion hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Visit her blog at www.bookjourney.wordpress.com to check out featured posts from bloggers all around the country celebrating the freedom to read books of their choosing!

According to the ALA (American Library Association): A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Banned Books Week. Click here, www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedbydecade/2000_2009, for a list of Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books from 2000-2009.

I don't know about you, but if someone tells me not to read a certain book because its content is politically incorrect, too graphic or falsely exaggerated, my curiosity is instantly piqued. What is it that they don't want me to learn, understand, or experience?

This year for Banned Books Week, I chose to re-read my favorite book of all time, The Grapes of Wrath. I read this book the summer before my junior year of college and it has never left me. I think often of the Joad family that Steinbeck created with such depth of emotion and grace, especially during the struggling economy our nation is currently facing.

** I am giving away a new copy of The Grapes of Wrath to one, lucky commenter! Comment on this post and let me know what your favorite banned book is to be entered into the giveaway. The deadline to enter will be Friday, Oct. 12.

The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

                                                            ~ Chapter Twenty-Five

     To me, there is no book that deserves to be read and cherished more than John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Since its publication in 1939, the book has been challenged and/or banned for a variety of citations including: exaggeration of situation, communist sympathies, and obscene language and sexual references.
     The story follows the Joad family as they migrate west in search of work after being turned off the land they farmed in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. It is a story about the strength of family, the will to survive, both the kindness and cruelty of others, and the unbreakable American spirit. It is a story that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of emotions.
     It will make you angry and sad. It will make you reevaluate what is important in your life. It will make you question how strong you could be under the worst of circumstances. Lastly, it will leave you hopeful, comforted that the human heart is ultimately good.
     If you haven't read The Grapes of Wrath, I greatly encourage you to do so. Stop whatever you are currently reading and head to your local library or bookstore. Read this book, share this book. It is the Great American Novel.

"Ever'thing we do- seems to me is aimed right at goin' on, Seems that way to me. Even gettin' hungry- even bein' sick; some die but the rest is tougher. Jus' try to live the day, 'jus the day."  

                                                                                      ~ Ma Joad

Book Description (from the Penguin cover): The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin had summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. At once naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck's fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American classics. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided of Haves and Have-Nots, Steinbeck created a drama that is intensively human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity.

Keep Reading Banned Books and Celebrate Your Freedom to Read!
Rebecca