D H Lawrence

Kangaroo D H Lawrence

Rootless, restless, nomadic, longing to escape the decay of post-war Europe, Richard and Harriet Somers flee to Australia, hoping to begin a new and freer life. Richard, a disillusioned writer, is drawn into an extreme political group headed by the enigmatic Kangaroo. In his search for ideal love, both brotherly and personal, Somers finds himself both attracted and repelled by Kangaroo - with terrifying consequences. This is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel, set in Australia. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney and revised it three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are vivid and sympathetic and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level. A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour. It was winter, the end of May, but the sun was warm, and they lay there in shirt-sleeves, talking. Some were eating food from paper packages. They were a mixed lot-taxi-drivers, a group of builders who were putting a new inside into one of the big houses opposite, and then two men in blue overalls, some sort of mechanics. Squatting and lying on the grassy bank beside the broad tarred road where taxis and hansom cabs passed continually, they had that air of owning the city which belongs to a good Australian.