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This sophomore novel is a cross between Brief Encounter and Touching from a Distance (the Ian Curtis memoir), exploring a doomed affair between two surprisingly staid characters. The first half has some fine bucolic writing and not much else, the second half kicks into life when Lawrence explores the depression of Siegmund in an age when depression was remarkably unbritish. The seeds of Lawrence’s mercurial, passionate antiheroes and antiheroines are here, with the characters avidly loving each other in one paragraph and scowling with hatred in the next. And now, having completed Lawrence’s novels in this Year of the Plague 2020, here are my best to worst rankings.

D.H. Lawrence . . . RANKED

NOVELS:

1 � Women in Love
2 � Sons and Lovers
3 � Lady Chatterley’s Lover
4 � The Lost Girl
5 � Kangaroo
6 � Aaron’s Rod
7 � The White Peacock
8 � The Rainbow
9 � The Plumed Serpent
10 � The Trespasser
11 � The Boy in the Bush*

NOVELLAS:

1 � St. Mawr
2 � The Virgin and the Gipsy
3 � The Fox
4 � The Captain’s Doll
5 � The Princess
6 � The Ladybird
7 � The Escaped Cock

* This is an MS from Mollie Skinner DHL tweaked and “recast� . . . as DHL contributed only ¼ of the text, I refute this novel’s place in the DH canon.