Customer Reviews

The Boy in the Bush (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence)

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"The Boy in the Bush"

In this book - first published in 1924 - D.H. Lawrence recasts a manuscript which was originally written by one Mollie Skinner, a woman he met when he was travelling in Australia.

Theme: Jack Hector Grant, aged 17, has been been kicked out of his agricultural college in England, as the book opens. His mother was a native Australian, his father is in the army, both prefer travelling the world rather than living a life in England, so Jack has seen little of his parents during his boyhood, having been left in the charge of others. Jack is sent from Bedford, England, to live in Australia for a while. As the book opens, he arrives at the sea port of Fremantle, Western Australia in 1882, having travelled there on board a wool ship, to take up residency, and is placed with a family already settled there there. Thus begins his new life in Australia.
The book traces his journey from the age of 17 into maturity - his relationship with a family he lives with initially; his loves; his battles; his work and where it takes him; his relationship to the world in general, and to women in particular; and shows how he gradually changes and evolves as a person and becomes wilder, and one with the land, after being exposed for a long time to the hardships of the rougher and more solitary side of life in a young Australia.

This isn't a book I would recommend anyone to read. It is not the best of literature one could find. The book is too slow and laboured and long-winded (391 pages); the language is protracted, deliberately drawn out too long, and often repetitive; the ideas wander unnecessarily, on and on; the story itself is not particularly unusual or sufficiently interesting to amount to a reason to read the book; the account is overall too long; there is no actual climax, but simply a historical account following the progression of the youth through to the man; and there isn't enough to be gained from the book to make the long journey through it worthwhile. (But do read it if you want to, these are only my views.)

Two and a half stars.

I had slight apprehension as to this novel being completely part of the Lawrence canon or not. True, it is not among the greatest Lawrence novels, such as "Women in Love", "Sons and lovers" or "The Plumed Serpent", nonetheless greatly enjoyable yarn about the West Australian outback in the late colonial era, and, best of all, completely and unmistakably -Lawrence.
True enough the novel drags now and again, and it is gauche in its Victorian framework, but there's no one like Lawrence to bring the understanding of the deeper currents of life. So, definitely worth your time. Even a sentence, a single thought of his, can make for an outstanding achievement (even if 90 previous pages were a bit of a drag!):

"Perhaps death, after a life of real courage, is like a happy camping expedition in the unknown, before a new start."

The Boy in the Bush is a minor work being a collaboration between Lawrence & Mollie Skinner. It is still a interesting read containing "Laurentian" ideas more fully worked out in his other novels.