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The Rainbow

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The Rainbow

By: D. H. Lawrence
Narrated by: Maureen O'Brien
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About this listen

Set in the rural midlands of England, The Rainbow revolves around three generations of Brangwens, a family deeply involved with the land and noted for their strength and vigour. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter, Anna, as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. Their stories continue in Women in Love.

©1995 The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Classics

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Critic reviews

"O'Brien reads the Brangwens, both women and men, as vital people, with instinctive lines that are both sensual and spiritual; always they are whole and organic as they are drawn inexorably into the Rainbow. Both book and reading give us Lawrence at his best." ( AudioFile)
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Maureen O'Brien gives a dazzling performance. It was word perfect and had a deep understanding and obvious love of the text. Bravo

Fantastic Rendition

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It was a stunning novel, something I would happily listen to again. overall the performance was well delivered but some of the voices put on by the narrator where incredibly annoying at times. D.H. Lawrence is a classic for all the right reasons. Beautiful!

The Rainbow

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The biography of generations of the Brangwen family, their life at the Marsh and their relationships are layered with passionate intensity and with words that are palpable and breathe.
There is richness in the detail of the characters....intimate thoughts and desires, reflecting their own humanity and themes of class, religion and sexuality pertinent to the period; and the struggle between the rational and instinctual.
Passions are visceral, with interactions that I suspect (I hope...) the rest of us rest experience, but fail to realise; and you need to love Lawrence to endure some of these passages ! I do laugh when Ursula and Anton Skrebensky have sex for the first time and DHL describes this as ....” their final entry into the source of creation “

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the use again of jewish references by 19th century novelists; Lawrence was no different......”Anna Lensky’s father owed money to the Jews...” that reinforce anti-semitic tropes.

Brilliant of course, but you need to love Lawrence

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DH L has his faults but is a kind of revelation - this audiobook helps you to find it. Hard going at first but the reader finds the rhythm.

Making Lawrence more digestible

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I don’t know of any other writer who articulates the internal and external world of each character in such a perceptive, nuanced way. And portrays the shifting dynamic of relationship … As though he gives a form of expression to unarticulated recesses of your experience.

Acute perception

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So different from today's bestsellers. I don't think I would have got through this as a written text but I got completely swept up in the audiobook. Narrator is excellent
I am going straight on to Women in Love

intense, surprising, infuriating

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I rarely stop listening to a book half way through, but this is a real slog. The storyline is repetitive and depressing. Obviously the quality of the writing cannot be denied and there are some beautiful observations both of the natural world and the inner soul. However, there are only so many times you can listen to a couple hating each other one day qnd loving each other passionately the next day. There is no story line, no interesting characters, nothing changes. I got 12 hours through and couldn't bear any more, couldn't BEAR it (as Lawrence would have repeated). Not for me and I wonder if the narrator regretted her acceptance of the job half way through? She kept up a good show regardless.

A long slog

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Almost every aspect of human experience is described and explored so vividly. The Rainbow shows you your every colour one by one.

Like therapy

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It's a few decades since I read any Lawrence and I thought I'd give this a try as one of his landmark novels. It tells the story of three generations of a Derbyshire family and their passions, frailties and accommodations with the rising industrialising world around them. On the plus side is some very poetic writing and description and a vivid characterisation of the main protagonists and their passions/dilemmas. But oh how tedious the struggles with sexuality and identity. This might have been liberating to the spirits of his age, for the first time finding their feelings represented in his characters, but to this modern reader it is tedium in the extreme - overblown romanticism and occasional bodice-ripping flights of fancy. One does care about the characters to a degree - though some are more silhouetted than fleshed out. The tale of the last of the 3 generations is the most interesting - how Ursula Brangwen takes flight in search of her destiny, but did we need to dredge through such acres of previous generations and her own sexual anxst to get there? By the time you get here, you couldn't care less. Lawrence stands up far less well than his contemporaries, such as the wonderfully penetrating Henry James or the magnificent James Joyce. By comparison his plotting, psychology, use of ideas and ability to capture meaning is thin and undistinguished. What an overrated writer he turned out to be.

no gold at the end of this one

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