Monday, July 18, 2011

Book Review: A Room with a View

Ah, what's to be said about this E.M. Forster classic that hasn't been said already? Published in 1908, Forster paints the painfully restrictive, often silly middle-class English life of Lucy Honeychurch. Lucy wants more than what is expected of her, more than what the social mores of the time allow. She wants a life with a view.

Forster presents the Honeychurches and their community as pillars of all that is good and noble among Englishmen, and he presents the Emmersons, the unconventional, erratic foils to the Honeychurhces. Lucy is doomed to shake loose of convention from the moment George Emmerson kisses her. It just takes her awhile.

Satire, wit, romance: it's all here. It's been 25 years or more since I last read A Room with a View, and now I'm going to get comfy, pull up Netflix, and watch the movie again. Sometimes 1908 is a much, much better place to be.

1 comment:

Susan (Reading World) said...

I have that book on my shelf but it's always just been one of those books I felt I should get to one day. Your review makes me WANT to read it.