A Room with a View

The first Forster I read was A Passage to India, which I did not at all like. But the two Forsters I've read since (this and Howards End) have been much more enjoyable. This is so short as to be practically a novella and tells the brief story of Lucy, a young English woman who travels with her cousin to Florence and meets a father and son when they offer to exchange their rooms, which overlook the Arno, with those of the two women and come to change her life forever. It's lighthearted and amusingly mocking of the milieu it depicts but has a fundamental sweetness.

Very old-fashioned, of course, but a pleasant enough read. Forster's skill is on display, even if the characters are extremely hard to relate to at this point in history. Such histrionics! Propriety sure has changed! But I think that was part of the point even then–he's contrasting “conventionality” with new thinking. It's just that thinking these days is 100 years newer.

My attention wandered when reading this book, but I think for it's time it was very good. I like how the author reviews Lucy's struggles to be herself she is keeping up appearances all through the book and it wears her down. I do struggle with the ending. I think her family's reaction to her choices is ridiculous.

“Let's go to Italy!”

“Yes, let's!”

I decided to read this book for the wrong reasons (our upcoming trip to Italy and my incessant need to immerse myself in all things Italian) but by the time I'd finished reading the first page, marveling at the beauty of Forster's writing, I knew I'd found a new addition to my list of Books You Must Read.

Our main character, Lucy Honeychurch (what a great name!) is off to Italy with a relative. She meets a man, George Emerson, who startles her, frightens her, with his intensity, and she bolts back to her secure home in England and quickly becomes engaged to a comfortable man. But it is too late for comfort, and when she finds herself unexpectedly meeting up with George again, Lucy must choose between a life and a semblance of a life.

Beautiful writing. You will love this book.

He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that never eluded art.
E. M. Forster never ceases to amaze me. He knows how to give the soul and philosophy to a character and decorate their mind with such rich phsychology that no other writer can. His descriptions are so full of life and his parallels are so thought provoking. This little book is so full of life, love, contemplation, melancholy and so so much more. E. M. Forster was a man who understood love and life and felt both deeply.