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Title: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Author: D H Lawrence

Narrator: Samantha Bond

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-17-15

Publisher: silksoundbooks Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 49 votes

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

The story of Lady Chatterley and her love for her husband's gamekeeper outraged the sensibilities of Edwardian England. Lawrence had already been dismissed as a purveyor of the obscene for the attitudes to sex that he had shown in The Rainbow, which had been fiercely suppressed on its publication in 1915. Chatterley, written in several versions around 1928 in Italy in the final part of Lawrence's life, was a deliberate choice on the author's part to address sex head on, describe the act and its pleasures in detail and put forward his belief that mankind had lost touch with its pagan and natural roots, its link to the earth and therefore its strength.

Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned from publication in Britain until 1960, when the radical new publishing house Penguin Books brought out a paperback edition and was immediately taken to court for obscenity. The trial that followed became one of the marking posts for the '60s' 'revolution', with arguments for the beauty of Lawrence's descriptions of love and sex finally conquering the prudish sensibilities that Lawrence so despised and leading to a landmark legal ruling in Penguin's favour. For all the campaigning and crusading that has accompanied Lady Chatterley's Lover, it remains in essence a beautiful description of a true and lasting passion.

Members Reviews:

Amazing reader of classic great novel

I am not sure there could be a better reader than this great actor, and the writing it's DH Lawrence so it's brilliant.

Samantha makes Lady Chatterley come alive

If you could sum up Lady Chatterley's Lover in three words, what would they be?

Classic Erotica doubled in intensity by Samatha Bonds seductive voice. Listen with someone you love.

Leave it to Lawrence to make sex tedious

First, a warning: if you want to read it for the "dirty" parts, you will probably be disappointed. I found many of the sex scenes to be unnecessarily crude and not at all erotic and maybe that was Lawrence's point: that ordinary people aren't particularly sexy when it comes to sex. None of the lovers seemed to be particularly creative.

But the most troubling thing I found about the novel was that it seemed extremely ableist. I understand the novel reflects outdated attitudes toward people with disabilities and it is a product of its time, but it is still no less disturbing (or at least it shouldn't be) to a modern audience than racial or ethnic stereotypes. The prevailing attitude throughout seems to be that people with disabilities are not entitled to romantic love if they are not able to engage in "traditional" sexual activity.

What I found most interesting, and perhaps most relevant to contemporary readers, were the characters' discussions of economic theory.

As for the performance, I thought Samantha Bond did well, but there were a few places where you can hear her cough or clear her throat (and it clearly wasn't part of the script) and I wondered why that wasn't edited out in post-production.

Time to read again?

Considering the time within which this book was written, "progressive thinking" and current cultural memes and beliefs, within this beautifully written and wonderfully read love story, one can find insights and comfort that there is little new in the world.