Howard’s End – E. M. Forster

How I suffered. It’s not like any of this was unexpected (quite the opposite as, thanks to the help of Merchant-Ivory productions, the plot had very few surprises for me), but it’s all so heart-breaking. I very much like to identify with poor Mr Bast (it’s not as if I came from a poor family, but I am still the first kid to go to university, and went to another country – and LSE and Cambridge at that – and scrubbed dishes six nights a week for three years in order to pay my own expenses and feel like a pseudo-proletarian). Seeing him ultimately mistreated by people who (in some cases) mean well but fundamentally only see him as their own little project and not as, erm, a person, is just too much.

Sure, Charles will go to jail following Bast’s death, and his own kid (whom he will never meet) is going to inherit Howards End and be all posh – but that doesn’t even begin to make up for a stupid death under piles of books or the awfulness of not being in control of one’s own life because some do-gooders who are completely out of touch with reality secretly (or not so much at times) think that they know what’s best for everyone.

Being Forster, it’s obviously superbly written, but this story just gets me so very worked up!

A Passage to India - E.M. Forster

Ah, the relaxing joy of an E.M. Forster novel when your pregnant wife is overdue!

Seriously though, this novel was exactly what I needed - I considered reading Howards End, but I don't think I could have survived it emotionally...

Forster's subtle (or at times not so subtle) criticism of Western colonial attitudes is still remarkably relevant in today's world. As is his portrayal of mental illness. As is his description of class issues. As is his discussion of race.

Sure, Forster himself was a Westerner talking about India and was affected by all our (mis)perceptions and (mis)conceptions, but to me he remains fundamentally a genius.

A Room with a View – E.M. Forster

I read this book really rather distractedly because the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of it is one of my favourite movies, one that I watched countless times, and extremely faithful to the book, so the novel had very few surprises for me. I also met Julian Sands (George) at the Met in New York – he pretended not to notice me when I called him. No matter how much you are bothered by fans (and if you have been involved in the remarkably low number of acclaimed productions that Sands has over the last 20 years or so, the fans who recognize you are probably not many), I still think that if you don’t say hi in a (for once fairly empty) museum you are just an ass.

A Room with a View is a wonderful novel and, for once, one whose romanticized pictures of Italy and whose stereotyped portrayals of the Italian people don’t bother me (or not excessively, at least). Stories of similar forbidden loves have been told and re-told for centuries in faintly different versions, but Forster writes this one so beautifully that it is still, after more than a hundred years, a pleasure to read (probably also because of its shortness, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed 400 pages of this).