Reviews

D.H. Lawrence was fed up with the stuffy views of society and wrote openly, freely and sometimes graphically about sexuality and human behavior at the turn of the 20th Century.  Change during this time was rapid in many fields such as science and medicine; D.H. Lawrence was a catylist for change in literature.  Lawrence saw sex and intuition as key to perception of reality and a way to respond to the inhumanity of an increasingly industrialized culture. From Lawrence’s doctrines of sexual freedom arose obscenity trials, which had a deep effect on the relationship between literature and society. In 1912 he wrote: “What the blood feels, and believes, and says, is always true.” Unfortunately, given the frank nature of his writing during a sexually repressed time, the critics were anything but kind.  Here is a sample from an anonymous critic:  “The sewers of French pornography would be dragged in vain to find a parallel in beastliness.  The creations of muddy-minded... (more)

I love a good Victorian detective novel. While “…Suspicions…” is not a novel, it is a really good read. Summerscale has carefully researched a true British murder case from 1860 that served as inspiration for sensation novelists such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. The dark secrets of a Victorian middle-class home are subjected to thorough scrutiny if not wholly exposed. Although the book is described as “A mesmerizing portrait of one of England’ first detectives…” the detective in question, Mr. Whicher, is not as fully developed as an historical personality as might seem. Summerscale works hard to leverage rather sketchy descriptions of his person to archetypal effect, a stretch in some instances.

The relationship between the events upon which the book is based and the development of society’s taste for the macabre in literature, however, is successfully brought to life. Summerscale successfully connects a... (more)