Avec vue sur l'Arno (1908)

I very much enjoyed it. There were funny moments and romantic moments and it felt quite a bit like a modern romance (albeit set in Victorian/Edwardian times)! On my first read through I didn't take much more from it, but I'll need to read it again and look at it deeper, because given that it's a set text, there must be something in it to write about! I suppose I can talk about the repression of the Victorians, Lucy breaking through and how Cecil is the old era personified. Perhaps a second reading will help bring some more meaning out. xD ( )

Once more we have the English abroad and looking to marry, but without the interesting complications of A Passage to India. Like so many English novels of this era, the plot is entirely centered on the question of marry the person you want or the person that others think you should. This question having been turned over by thousands of similar novels offers little new insight. The shock created of a sudden kiss feels ridiculous. I'm not sure how much we can learn today from a people who bottled up their feelings and desires as much as these. The most interesting passage may have been the group bath with its hints of latent sexual desire and sensuality that went far beyond any romance Lucy Honeychurch may ever know...I will say that unlike many of this novel's contemporaries, it is relatively short. I'd only recommend it to someone who is a serious student of the genre or of Forster. ( )

shortish book full of silly mis understandings and English manners disguised as politeness (especially in their disguise of the English Abroad) that gets Lucy engaged to Cecil, only to be confronted with George. George, the awkward Englishman she met on holiday in Florence, who kissed her in the violets, and who she's in love with really but it takes her ages, and a return to England, to realise she's in love ( )

Every time I try to write a review about this small book something holds me back and I end up writing nothing about it. It has been 5 months since I read this so I will most likely depend the review on my memory of emotions.

I shall start by telling a personal story about that one time when an old lady from church visited my mother's house for some house-to-house prayer related to the Virgin Mary. She greeted me with a "Why are the windows closed?" which I mindlessly answered with "Why should they be opened?". Apparently, she perceived my response as rude while I wondered what was there to see outside these closed windows other than my grandfather's kitchen and cats stretching their bodies along the pavement. As absurd as this story was I can't help but make a connection of these windows to E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. Short and semi-sweet. A story of a lady torn between a dull, pretentious man of high class who she did not feel the least bit in love with and another man of lower class without the expected societal upbringing. Like finding a room with a view, it was, for her, a breath of fresh air, this another man, and made her realize that another perspective of things existed. Unfortunately, although it had made some of its point on happiness and the uncertainty of the future amidst the promise of love, the story unfolded much too quick for my taste and left no room for the right kind of development and romance. I honestly would have liked this better if it was longer, polished, more room for love to breathe, blossom, and grow. ( )

Funny, romantic, and pointed, with a bit of turn-of-the-century girl power sprinkled on top, A Room with a View is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Lucy leaves her close-knit family in the English countryside for "must do" trip to Italy, chaperoned by her needy and trying older cousin, Charlotte. Once installed in a pension in Florence run by a trustworthy Englishwoman, the two are disappointed to find that they have been given rooms that look out over the courtyard instead of over the river. An eccentric gentleman and his son, the Emersons, offer to trade their rooms with lovely views and after a lot of hemming and hawing over the propriety of such a thing, the ladies agree. Lucy is caught between her romantic and independent nature, and the desire to please her family and do what is correct in the eyes of Edwardian society. She is a bit undone by the unconventional George Emerson, a feeling which comes to a head in a spectacular field of violets and a last minute flight of the ladies to Rome. Part II brings us back to Lucy's home, along with an ill-matched fiancé that no one really likes that much. When the Emersons come back into Lucy's life, she finds herself deeper and deeper in a muddle that is partly her fault, and partly the fault of English society.

Forster's characters are nicely written and, while he does hit you over the head with the moral of the story a bit, the warmth and humor that comes through, particularly in the relationship between Lucy, her mother, and her brother, keep the book from being dogmatic or cliched. A fun classic! ( )