A spellbinding blend of literary criticism, biography and memoir, and an intimate, pugnacious reassessment of D. H. Lawrence

‘Her intensity and intimacy are engaging’ Blake Morrison, Guardian ‘A lovely, urgent, serious book' Tessa Hadley ‘Refreshing and unexpected’ Daisy Hay, Financial Times Brilliantly interweaving literary criticism, biography and memoir, Look! We Have Come Through! is a captivating exhumation of an author and a compelling manifesto for exposing ourselves to difficult and dangerous views. Lara Feigel listens to birds outside her window – their circling, strident calls – and thinks of D. H. Lawrence. It is the spring of 2020 and, as the pandemic takes hold, she locks down in rural Oxfordshire with her partner, her two children, and that most explosive of writers. Proceeding month by month through the year, she sets out to start again with Lawrence: to find vital literary companionship; to use him as a guide to rural living and even, unexpectedly, to child-rearing; to find a way through his writing to excavate the modern world she feels he helped bring into being. Tracing the arc of Lawrence’s life and delving deep into his writings, she confronts his anger, his passion, his tumultuous vitality. In the process, she faces some of today’s most urgent dilemmas, from secular religion to the climate crisis, from sex and sexuality to feminism’s ideas about motherhood. And, as she watches the seasons change alongside Lawrence, Feigel finds the rhythms of her own life shifting in unexpected ways.

"To be able to meet the world unillusioned but undismayed is what Lawrence did for Lara Feigel, and it is what she hopes he can do for us as a result of her bracing and honest book. Each chapter homes in on a major topic and Feigel has something fresh to say in every case … Some of the sharpest, shrewdest discussions I have seen of Lawrence for a long time." - The Critic

"Refreshing and unexpected … The case for reading, and for thinking hard and seriously about the role of reading in a world characterised by fracture, is powerfully made." - Financial Times

"A perceptive book … a critical biography but also a pandemic memoir – a story about how an author can inform and change your life … Part of the attraction of the book is Feigel’s candour: the charting of her ups and downs as the seasons pass. If she weren’t so attuned to Lawrence, it would feel ickily self-absorbed. But she writes insightfully about his central themes, and though she torments herself unduly by taking his wackier theories too seriously, her intensity and intimacy are engaging." - Guardian

"Praise for Free Woman: 'A fascinating mix of literary criticism, cultural history and memoir … Highly enjoyable" - Sunday Times

"An extraordinary meditation on what it means to be a clever, engaged woman … A classical, precise use of language … Most compelling … Physically and intellectually intimate" - Guardian

"Ironic, beautiful and rather moving" - Literary Review

"Free Woman is not a biography, but the same artistic process is at work: as a biographer, you think you are going to possess your subject, but they always end up possessing you. It’s fertile ground, and Feigel a fine explorer." - Spectator

"Free Woman has taken on the formidable Doris for a new generation … Feigel has the gift of converting complex thoughts into coherent sentences that delight" - The Times