The Rainbow

The Rainbow is one of the 13 novels written by D.H. Lawrence, the renowned English author who's work has been called everything from "smut" to "pure genius." This work and its sequel (Women in Love) read like psycho-sexual poetry, which naturally shocked the moralistic pants off the Brits in 1915. The Rainbow is relatively plotless, and its primary literary device is the characterization of three generations of the Brangwen family, whose small coal town lives are conflicted by the rapid industrialization of turn-of-the-century England.

If you're reading Lawrence for the first time perhaps the Rainbow isn't the best place to start: go with Sons and Lovers instead. But this novel is a cog in the Rube Goldberg of Lawrence's psyche, and it's a good read if you know what you're getting into. He's been called a misanthrope, a homosexual, and a feminist's nightmare, but Lawrence, who you either love or you hate, helped to change the topography of English literature forever.