Reviews

From the modern to the classic and back. The first is Straight Ahead, Clare Shaw's debut poetry collection. The second is Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence and the third is Carrie Lynn Lyons' novel Dream Pictures.

• Straight Ahead
  A poetry collection by Clare Shaw.
•  Straight Ahead, Clare Shaw’s first collection of poetry, was released in November 2006, and she is also becoming a powerhouse on the poetry circuit. Hailing from the north of England, her work encapsulates a sense of the area, both physical and social. The poems reflect her tousle with life, giving intimate glimpses into her past, her survival and her psyche. Her work is vibrant with life, never rose-tinted, yet laced with dark humour giving contrast to the depth of truth gleaned from the heart of her experience. Her work is tinted with many shades, from the poignancy of Sylvia Plath to the ironic humour of Carol Ann Duffy.
  Clare Shaw has risen from a past that many would bury. Instead, she carves chunks from her experience, crafts them into poetry and throws them out to the world, both challenging and informing. Her ability is consummate, and with an unexpected line creates a shudder, a thrill, or laughter turning the tone of her work in a new direction. When she reads her poetry, the power of the words infuse with her own dynamism giving a supreme performance. Buy the collection or hear her read; either way it is highly rewarding.

• Sons and Lovers
  by D. H. Lawrence
   Sons and Lovers was first published in 1913 (Viking Press).
  These views are based on the 1960, (Penguin) complete and unabridged edition.
  If you want a story of high-drama and breathtaking cliff-hangers with a definitive conclusion, I suggest you pick up something other than Sons and Lovers from your local bookshop. This is a story of psychological traumas, forged in the cauldron of a coalmining village in the early twentieth-century. Based on D. H Lawrence’s early life, it is a sea of powerful currents that heave and pull the characters, shaping their mindsets and in many ways dictating the pattern of their future. The mother, Mrs Morel, married for love, but soon finds disillusionment in the shallow-minded, live for today attitudes of her husband. Her husband, a traditional hardworking, hard-drinking man, is browbeaten and forced into submission by his more intellectual wife. The paths of the sons’ lives are directed by the love their mother withdrew from her husband to obsessively shower on them. The maternal love is reciprocated so deeply that incestuous desires are suggested, though, I believe, not physically manifested.        
           There has been some criticism levelled at The Master,(as brilliant as the novel is) the fictional biography of a period in the life of Henry James, written by Colm Tóibín. The criticism is based on Tóibín’s representation of the thoughts, dreams and aspirations of James as being purely subjective, so they cannot be regarded as accurate; that they are the product of the author, who is unable to truthfully relate the thoughts of any mind but his own. Compare this with Sons and Lovers, which is regarded as a fictional autobiography of Lawrence’s early years. Lawrence’s own thoughts and life are echoed in detail in the character of Paul Morel. The argument against Tóibín’s novel must lend power to the authenticity of the content of Lawrence’s work.
          Considering the amount of barely camouflaged personal introspection and soul-bearing honesty contained in Sons and Lovers, it must have taken D. H. Lawrence a great deal of courage to write. So why did he write it? Though Freud was voicing his Oedipus complex theory, it is unlikely that Lawrence had the sole intent of representing the theory in novel form. If he was aware of the theory, then it is more likely, that as a young thinking man, Lawrence saw the elements of the theory in his own history and, perhaps, by writing the story could gain a better understanding of his own experience, placing his own confusion and ‘hang-ups’ in better order. If so, he obviously thought it to be forward thinking for his time, which it has proved to be. In answer to his critics, in particularly Heinemann, he is quoted as replying, “Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rutters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up England today." Though a rather verbose reply, it sums-up his frustration, in that the critics were still judging his work by the criteria of the ‘Classic’ novel, the norm of the day. It is also worth noting that despite Heinemann’s scathing appraisal, he later admitted that Sons and Lovers was a consistent page-turner.
          Critics of Sons and Lovers have made much of the parallel with Freud’s Oedipus Complex. If Freudians are correct, the Oedipus complex is relatively common in young males, but in public the majority of men would deny it ever existed, in them. I think, in retrospect, Lawrence recognised the consuming love for his mother as being the hallmark of his childhood, using it as the main theme of Sons and Lovers and extending it to deal with the psychological ‘fall-out’ that he encountered as he entered into manhood. Paul Morel’s relationship with his mother influenced his views on love, marriage and his image of, and interaction, with women; these details are all cloned from Lawrence’s own life and thoughts. His plot involves the sometimes disjointed, development of a child’s mind, through adolescence to manhood, with all its pressures, moods, lows, highs and questions. Lawrence could have created a story with great drama and plot, and through the character of Paul Morel shown himself in a better light, but he chose the realism of his own experience.
          There has been much discussion on the lack of a substantial plot in Sons and Lovers. In the act of staking his life to the theme, Lawrence was committing himself to the realisms of his life, which was not filled with high drama, or the consistently developing plot of the conventional novel of its time. In places Paul Morel appears subordinated, but this is the nature of any true narrative of a life.
          It could be said that the ending of the story is flat, but Paul Morel has reached a water-shed in his life where the past has been swept away. Though despairing, he chooses life over death, light over dark, giving hope of a new start and a fresh future.
          I do not intend to outline the individual chapters; these can be found in numerous supply. My reason is that condensing a chapter makes it impossible for the reader to grasp the deep psychological aspects embedded in the work, so not serving justice to Lawrence.
           I think Sons and Lovers is a masterpiece of period description, both social and environmental, giving insight into the working-class world at the end of the Victorian era. Psychologically astute, many of the mental traumas described are as pertinent in life today as they were at the time of the author.

• Dream Pictures
  A Novel by Carrie Lynn Lyons
•    Dream Pictures is Carrie Lynn Lyons' debut novel (Mundania Press) and the first in her planned Carnival Soul Trilogy. 
  .......The owners of a travelling carnival rescue Jaime Weston, an orphaned child and heiress to a fortune, after she witnessed the murder of her parents. The carnival owners are Solomon, a hunchback, and Leon who has the tortured build of Frankenstein.
  .......Jaime has psychic visions, her ‘dream pictures’ and these reveal details of her parents’ death and the murderer’s scheme. Solomon and Leon vow to protect Jaime at all costs, and find that helping her heals their own wounds, removing them from isolation. Will Jaime’s powers and the protection of her friends be enough to save her from the evil killer stalking her?
  .......With vivid characters standing out against the vibrant background of a travelling show, Dream Pictures takes the reader on a thrilling journey as the cast pits will against will to survive.