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    A Room With A View
    A Room With A View
    A Room With A View
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Room With A View

    Written by E.M. Forster

    Narrated by B.J.Harrison

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Lucy Honeychurch and her older cousin Miss Bartlett, tour Italy in the springtime. However, the pension they are staying at may as well be in London. The proprietress speaks a London cockney, the meat is overdone, and their windows give them a view of dirty alleys. However, when the socially clumsy Mr. Emerson offer to exchange rooms, this does anything but remedy the situation. You see, nobody knows what to make of the Emersons. It's so hard to know how to respond to people who speak the truth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherB.J. Harrison
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781937091965
    Author

    E.M. Forster

    Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist, short story writer and essayist best known for his books A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). Born in London, young Edward lost his father to tuberculosis before he turned two years old. His mother Lily and Edward subsequently moved to a country house in Hertfordshire called Rooks Next, which served as a model for the eponymous house in the book Howards End. Edward inherited a considerable sum of money from his paternal great-aunt that allowed him to embark on a career as a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent but did not enjoy his time there. He then went to King's College in Cambridge where he joined a secret society known as the Apostles, several members of which later helped form the Bloomsbury Group, a literary/philosophical society that boasted such early members as Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Vanessa Bell. Upon graduation, Forster went abroad and wrote of his travels extensively. Upon his return, he set up residence in Weybridge, Surrey where he would write all six of his novels. All of his books were written between 1908 and 1924 and his last, A Passage to India, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Forster was a homosexual and while he never married, he did have several affairs with male lovers during his lifetime, including a forty-year romance with married policeman Bob Buckingham, at whose home he collapsed and died at age 91 of a stroke. Forster explored his struggle with his own sexuality in his book Maurice. Forster was extremely critical of American foreign policy during his lifetime and rebuffed efforts to film adaptations of his novels due to the fact that the productions would likely use American financing. After his death, however, several of his books were made into films and three of them - A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India are among the most highly regarded films of the late 20th century.

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    Reviews for A Room With A View

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    • 4/5
      An excellent book in many ways. This seems to have been one of his earlier books, and I have seen the views of some critics who mention that the book is not as sophisticated as his later books, like "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India."For my part, I enjoyed the book. We all know that E.M. Forster had an almost lyrical style of writing. He could make images dance before your eyes. This is a love story and a gentle satire on English life at the turn of the 19th century. We lie to ourselves, and then also, to others. We deny our feelings, and often choose, or reject, mates due to social prejudices. In this case, unlike "A Passage to India", there is redemption and a happy ending to the tale. Love rules, prejudiced banished.
    • 5/5
      My favorite book for a long, long time.
    • 5/5
      This charming book completely suited my current mood. The heroine is Lucy, who we first meet on a trip to Italy with her spinster cousin. There are, of course, competing suitors to marry Lucy, but though the outcome is predictable, all the characters were interesting and memorable and the travel scenes a lot of fun.
    • 3/5
      A Room with a View is a wonderful classic - not that deep, but a fun book to read. I would have a hard time recommending Frederick Davidson as a narrator. I have seen lots of mixed reviews about him. Many people say he takes some time to get used to. If that's the case, at 7 cds, A Room with a View is not long enough. His women's voices have an irritating quality that made them all sound so simpering and shallow. This might have been intentional given the characters in the book, but it definitely detracted from what was a delightful story.
    • 5/5
      I have a very vivid memory of reading E.M. Forster's "A Room with a View" while sitting in a tent somewhere on a camping trip out west. So, I thought this was a probably a re-read for me.... but now I think I just made that memory up. I was certainly familiar with the plot, as the Helena Bonham Carter movie was on endless repeat on HBO when I was young so I knew I loved the story.The novel tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, who lives in the repressed Victorian age where young women do what they're supposed to rather than following their passions. She gradually and quietly wakes up as the story progresses.This book was straight up my alley... the writing is great and full of marvelous little insights. Nostalgia may have pushed this up a bit to 5 stars for me, but it's a book I definitely wouldn't mind reading over again.
    • 5/5
      While traveling in Italy, a young Victorian woman Lucy Honeychurch hopes to explore and learn about the artwork and architecture of the area. Instead she has a brush with violence that leads her into a an intrigue with a young man. She flees her passion, traveling from Italy back to England, where she must learn to listen to her own heart. I was impressed with Forster's take on his characters, making them complicated and interesting and often funny. I especially enjoyed his portrayal of Lucy, who's independent spirit is hidden deep down beneath her layers of appropriate behavior. Forster treated her as a person and even advocates a level of equality between a man and a woman, especially in romantic relationships, hinting that the kind of man as protector role which puts women down is a backwards kind of ideology. Forster is compassionate about his characters, showing depth of soul and potential for redemption even in the antagonists whom other writers might villainize. On top of that Forster's writing style is gorgeous with crisp clean prose. He weaves in metaphor beautifully without resorting to the kind of over the top sentence construction that can be confusing and is often seen in older works. The simplicity of style makes for a smooth and easy read. I loved it. More Forster, please!
    • 4/5
      This was a really deep book, full of insight and theories on the world, society and people as individuals. Its quite a wordy book, but it was surprisingly captivating and wasn't a chore to read or hard to get into. I found once I channelled into the voice of the writing it all flowed very well, and it all made sense. A lot of the concepts and ideas Forster had about property and class are still kind of relevant. I particularly liked the fact, especially given when it was written and the fact that Forster was man, that women aren't patronised to the scale I have come to expect from similar books (though it isn't totally free of don't-worry-your-pretty-little-head-isms). I loved that the book is based around a range of different female characters with different roles in society, with different ideas and approaches to life, women that are not ridiculed or pushed to the side. At the time it was written, women still hadn't been given the vote and weren't really seen as having much of a place in social debate or whatever, but Forster gives some of his female characters agreeable ideals and strong convictions. I was also really pleased with the way he approaches a part of the story which, for the time, was a very scandalous issue, without laying blame or demonising anyone by taking the mainstream point of view of the time. It was a wonderful book and I'll definitely be looking to read more of his work.
    • 2/5
      Apparently I will never tire of swimming against the tide. This opus has been consecrated as some sort of modern classic -- whatever in Hell that is supposed to mean -- but I must fail to join in the Hosannas. I am well aware that one must carefully distinguish the artist from the artistic product, yet somehow in this story I discerned a kind of mind-spiritedness or at-least arrogance behind the principal character, who already had plenty of it in her own right. Too bad, since Forster at his best can be enjoyable and even instructive.
    • 4/5
      I loved some things about this book... the characters were quite believable and likable in their own unique ways, for their own quirks, at least to begin...the writing style was charming...I didn't see some of the "complications" coming when they did, which was to the author's credit... but I was disappointed with the ending, which wrapped up entirely too neatly for my taste. There is, however, some real wisdom in this book. I bookmarked a LOT of quotes.
    • 5/5
      Far from a ponderous, castor-oil classic, this is a wonderfully readable book, with many concerns that resonate today: feminism, class prejudice, the encroachment of suburbia on rural life. The narrator's voice was sometimes pompous and intrusive, although the content of his buttings-in was always interesting.
    • 5/5
      The perfect example of a book with a strong message/moral, but it doesn't push the message over the characters.
    • 2/5
      Most interesting aspect is the way Zadie Smith updated situations into a century later. Race issue here = class issue. Margaret is annoying rather than inspiring, as is the mirror character in On Beauty. Why did she marry brute loser Wilcox? But it's good to read about single women in that time. Tedious narrative style, over complex, although some stunning insights, especially about the countryside in England (compare with less sentimental The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul) and the price of `progress'. The Imperial assumptions are truly shocking now..
    • 5/5
      One of the densest books I've ever read. And I mean that in a good way -- it's like one of those Byzantine ivory carvings (no movie tie-in pun intended) that open up and have all those tiny devotional episodes going on inside. Layers and layers of commentary all wrapped up in this almost fragile -- but actually really forceful -- writing. What a total trip.
    • 4/5
      Good lesson for everybody. Loved the end.Forster as his best.
    • 2/5
      Nothing too remarkable.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1910, but I'd never read it. I was out of books to read and I found it on my youngest daughter's shelf, leftover from her high school days. Parts made me laugh out loud. Forster definitely had a gift with the English language. And it came full circle, which always satisfies me in stories. I also liked that while it was published over 100 years ago and reflected the times (particularly attitudes toward women), there were scenes that could have happened today. For instance:"You shall see the connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a mistress—I forgave you. My sister has had a lover—you drive her from the house. Do you see the connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel . . ." [spoken by Margaret]Later, Margaret thinks about her outburst, reflecting, "No message came from Henry; perhaps he expected her to apologize. Now that she had time to think over her own tragedy, she was unrepentant. She neither forgave him for his behaviour nor wished to forgive him. Her speech to him seemed perfect. She would not have altered a word. It had to be uttered once in a life, to adjust the lopsidedness of the world. It was spoken not only to her husband, but to thousands of men like him . . ." (italics mine) #metooThis is a classic I overlooked. If you've overlooked it also, check it out.
    • 5/5
      If I could give this more than 5 stars I would. Forster writes with beauty, sympathy and understanding. I’ve been wanting to te-read this for a while, and got to it this month for the GoodReads Dead Writers Society Literary Birthday read for January. Sometime last year I re-watched the movie and as I remember it, the movie follows the book very closely, though I’m sure I would see changes if I watched it now after right having finished the book. The only difference I noticed was the ending--in the book Lucy’s family and friends are angry with her for marrying George, but I don’t think that was in the movie. Both have their last scene back in Italy, in the same room Lucy was in before. The BBC apparently has a more recent production that has George die in WWI at the end, and Lucy visit Italy again as an older woman years later without him (!).
    • 4/5
      Howards End is a wonderful adventure into the lives of Edwardian England. By the end of the novel, I not only wanted to be a Schlegel sister, I wanted to inhabit Howards End itself and make a wonderful, artsy, educational life for myself. The characters are so believable, and they seem to move throughout the story of their own accord. There were a few moments when I felt as though I could skip ahead through some long narrations, but other than that, I enjoyed the book and looked forward to every turn of the page! I would recommend this book to anyone with an imagination!
    • 5/5
      Two sisters encounter another English family while on holidays in Germany and develop ties that carry on through the novel. Howards End is the name of the family's estate north of London based on the author's beloved childhood home, and it plays a symbolic role in the story that creeps up on you. There's a thematic parallel here with "Passage", the communication challenge in this case being between and across social strata within a single culture. Both novels propose bridges built from compassion, from assuming there are commonalities to be found versus doggedly insisting upon an "us" and "them" dichotomy. To achieve it we must lay ourselves emotionally open, sensitive to our own hearts first before we can presume to understand the hearts of others.I found the opening very engaging, didn't care for some plot turns in the middle but was deeply held by its ending. Events are interspersed with impressive psychological insight in the quieter passages. I wasn't always on point with following the symbolism and nuances of the activities, just as I wasn't entirely free of wanting something eventful to happen during the interludes, but then I was rewarded for reflection or patience respectively. This fault lies with me rather than the novel, and I think a second read would go much more smoothly. E.M. Forster is a classic "writer's writer" who knows how to turn a metaphor to his advantage or recall an earlier passage at precisely the correct time.
    • 4/5
      Excellent portrait of British society.
    • 4/5
      Howard's End seemed like it could have been written by Jane Austin. Social classes and mores clash in this story set in turn of the century England. Margaret and Helen Schlegel value culture and the arts; the Wilcox family are more interested in business and commerce; and the Basts are a lower class couple whom the Schlegel sisters want to help out. When Ruth passes away, the only Wilcox to truly appreciate Howard's End, she leaves her family estate to Margaret. Greedy and wanting to rent the estate for profit, the Wilcox family tell Margaret nothing about her inheritance. In time Margaret falls for Ruth's former husband and eventually moves into Howard's End, a fitting end since Margaret is simpatico with the history and beauty of the old family estate.
    • 1/5
      I know this is a classic and it's been on my list for a long, long time. But I just didn't like it at all. :(
    • 3/5
      Didn't finish. Never read this when I was younger. Obviously beautifully written, but just not holding my interest. Whole chapters about manners and whatnot, just not gonna happen. Same issues as when I periodically try and read Jane Austen. Recognize the brilliance, of course, just to much in another era.
    • 4/5
      The Wilcoxes are rich and traditional - women are to have influence instead of rights, the lower classes are beneath their concern, etc. The Schlegels, Helen and Margaret, are different; also wealthy, they feel a strong whiff of noblesse oblige and a kind of socialism. So, here's so summary:Helen meets the Wilcoxes and falls in love with their ways and the titular house. Manages to resist marrying into the family, knowing it would not do. Two years later, after Mrs. Wilcox has passed away, Margaret is drawn to the Wilcoxes and marries Mr. Wilcox. It all begins very well; Margaret plays Rosamond Vincy. Unfortunately, while Mrs. Wilcox is another one of Forster's Mrs. Moore characters - one of those women with an overwhelmingly exceptional presence yet nothing special about them in particular - Mr. Wilcox is set in his little ways. Wanting to appear knowledgeable, he assuredly gives unsound financial advice, bungles his house purchases, and blames it all on someone else, in a most high-handed way. Margaret wants to use her love to reform him. I enjoyed this book, despite finding most of the characters despicable (Charles, Mr. Wilcox, Tibby, etc.)
    • 2/5
      If you identify with early 20th century upper class British, then you might like this book. Others will find it dated and irrelevant. I did. It might have been good in its time, but I read it 100 years after its time.
    • 4/5
      Dissolves into pointless melodrama at the end and the "fallen woman" Jacky stuff is kind of weird (what happens to her?) but the concert chapter (those descriptions of Beethoven's Fifth!) and the following scene at Wickham Place ensures that this book deserves its spot on 20th Century classics lists:

      "If only he could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh, to acquire culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours in the evening, how was it possible to catch up with leisured women, who had been reading steadily from childhood? His brain might be full of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not make them "tell," he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella. Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. "I suppose my umbrella will be all right," he was thinking. "I don't really mind about it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my umbrella will be all right." Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats. Ought he to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier still he had wondered, "Shall I try to do without a programme?" There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty."

    • 5/5
      Along with Passage to India, one of Forster's two great novels that deserve to be called great literaure. Howard's End alone manages to take on large themes while keeping much of the charm and warmth that draw many readers to Forster's earlier novels of awakening.
    • 5/5
      This novel is beautifully written and, for a book written before World War I, surprisingly relevant to today's political and social climate. The central conflict seems to be between Margaret's ideals and how these manifest in real life. She is intellectual, well-educated, and has a strong will, which makes it disappointing to see her make choices that seem counter to these aspects of herself. I felt so irritated with her for some of the mistakes I saw her making, but in the end, she seems to come to a place of compromise that is better for (nearly) everyone involved than what would have been available had she dug in her heels from the beginning. The novel seemed to be gearing up for a grand confrontation and dramatic decisions, and so at first this compromise ending was unsatisfying to me. But upon reflection, I decided that the ending is all the more realistic for the lack of fireworks. Gradually I saw that the decisions Margaret made that were so frustrating to me were frustrating because they're the kinds of decisions I think anyone makes who has ideals and also lives in the world. It's more satisfying to read about people bucking convention, throwing off everything they once valued and making a clean breast of it as a shiny, new person, but it's not realistic. We can make external changes, but we don't really become new people, or if we do, it's a slow metamorphosis, and one we can't govern ourselves, contrary to the promises of self-help books, talk shows, and websites selling fitness programs.Compromise doesn't give the dopamine release that I crave, and it doesn't feed the desire I still feel despite my constant efforts to the contrary to see punished people I think have done wrong, but it provides a much more loving and sustainable model for change than the dramatic ending. Only connect.Some quotes that spoke to me:p.25: "It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven."p. 52: "I'm tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves."p.91: "Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have moved mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken...Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty."p. 128: "The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of movables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians in the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret to their imaginative poverty."p.132: "I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems to do well enough, but it's no more like the real thing than money is like food. There's no nourishment in it."
    • 3/5
      Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.This is the story of the Schlegals, and the Wilcoxes (who own the house called Howards End).The Wilcoxes represent the 'outer world', a masculine world of industry, finance and commerce. The Schlegals represent the 'inner world' - relationships, liberal politics, the arts. The novel's epigraph, 'Only connect', suggests that these two worlds are inter-dependant. As Margaret Schlegal says, "Don't brood too much on the superiority of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is medieval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them".The two families meet on holiday, and Helen Schlegal later visits the Wilcoxes at Howards End, where she becomes briefly engaged to Paul Wilcox. The affair ends unhappily and in embarrassment, but the two families later meet up again in London, when Mrs Wilcox and Margaret Schlegal enjoy a brief friendship before Mrs Wilcox's sudden death.Helen Schlegal introduces Leonard Bast into the family after a casual meeting when Helen 'steals' his umbrella. He is a young, bookish clerk who lives with a woman to whom he is not married.After the wedding of Mr Wilcox's daughter, Helen turns up with Leonard and his 'wife', who seems to be drunk. Separately, Margaret and Helen learn that Jacky Bast was once the mistress of Mr Wilcox. Helen goes abroad. Margaret and Mr Wilcox marry, quietly. Margaret observes that, "When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil".When Helen returns to England, she is visibly pregnant, by Leonard Bast. Margaret is furious with her husband for his hypocrisy, his inability to connect Helen's 'disgrace' with his own dalliance with Jacky Bast. Margaret considers leaving her husband and moving abroad with Helen, but everything changes when Charles Wilcox accidentally kills Leonard and ends up serving a three-year sentence for his manslaughter. A broken man, Mr Wilcox lives - with Margaret, Helen and Helen's son - at Howards End, the home around which the story and its protagonists all revolve and to which, one way or another, they all return. [Jan 2005]
    • 4/5
      One of the few books I may read twice.