Booklover Book Reviews

A Room With A View Synopsis

Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiance Cecil Vyse. (The Nile – Australia)

BOOK REVIEW

E M Forster’s A Room With A View is a bonafide classic that has been critically reviewed by greater literary minds than I, so here I will just briefly summarise my thoughts.

I always enjoy comedies of manners, and A Room With  A View fits that bill. E M Forster takes great delight at making fun of his characters and there are instance where the characters even make fun of themselves.

Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down his mouth at the corners. Was this the reception his action would get from the world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. But he was sensitive to the successive particles of it which he encountered.

Many classics are heavy reads but E M Forster’s A Room With A View has a refreshing current of irreverence running through it and some lively characters that will appeal to a modern audience.

At the time of its publication, 1908, I expect some of the observations made about societal norms would have been quite shocking. I also quite liked how E M Forster addressed the reader directly on occasion – it brings the reader into the mockery.

My slight criticisms would be that certain parts were slightly laboured through my eyes as a contemporary reader and although I thoroughly enjoyed the romantic and uplifting conclusion, I guessed some of the plot twists before they occurred. But perhaps I was supposed to, was that the point?

Apparently in some versions of the novel an appendix penned by Forster is included describing what happens to the characters after the book ends. My copy did not include the appendix but I found a summary on Wikipedia. I am not sure why Forster wrote this appendix to the novel, it seems like a bit of a downer after the wonderful conclusion to the novel itself.

BOOK RATING: The Story 4 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5

BOOK DETAILS: A Room With A View (Amazon); A Room With A View (B&N); A Room With A View (The Nile – Australia)

Genre: Romance, Drama, Humour, Historical, Classic, Literature

Author Information: Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge. Forster wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Howard’s End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heuruse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. E. M. Forster died in 1970. His last novel, Maurice, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories and a number of non-fiction books.

Other reviews of A Room With A View: The Compulsive Reader ; Blog a Penguin Classic ; Emilyn Chand

Participation in the Classics Challenge hosted by November’s Autumn involves responding to a series of questions posted each month in respect to the particular classic you are reading at the time.

I am currently reading my first classic title for the year, A Room With A View by E M Forster.

A full review will be published upon completion, as I do for every title I read. For now, some information about the author.

When were they born? Where did they live?

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge.

What are some of the other novels they’ve written? 

Forster wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Howard’s End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heuruse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. E. M. Forster died in 1970. His last novel, Maurice, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories and a number of non-fiction books.

What do they look like? 

Interesting facts about E M Forster:

His name was officially registered as Henry Morgan Forster, but at his baptism he was accidentally named Edward Morgan Forster.

In the First World War, as a conscientious objector, he volunteered for the International Red Cross, travelling to Alexandria, Egypt.

Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as the private secretary to Tukojirao III, the Maharajah of Dewas.

Have you read A Room With A View or any other title by E M Forster?

Is E M Forster an author you would recommend to others?

A Room With A View is the first E M Forster title I have read but thus far I am enjoying his writing style and story sentiment.