Killing my TBR Classics pile: #2 A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

So after reading the MASSIVE tomes of Middlemarch and Anna Karenina, I decided my wrists needed a bit of a break, before they did break. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster seemed a good choice, coming in at only 176 pages, for my next 'Killing my TBR Classics pile' read.

There is no way I can write anywhere near as much on  A Room with a View as I have on my recent reviews. While I found it decidedly more enjoyable than Anna Karenina, it has stuck with me a lot less. In fact, at this point in time, I can tell you the plot, but my thoughts are a vague memory. Maybe I should start taking notes when I postpone my reviews.

This novel is set a few decades after Middlemarch was written, and it is nice to see how the role of women was changing. Although still very much under the power of men, and governed a lot by what was deemed proper, there was the feeling that there was just that bit more freedom, a bit more respect of their thoughts and a bit more choice that they could make.

“This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”

― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Class, apparently, had not made such progress - or at least, was only beginning to change. The discomfort felt by all the proper, upper-class folks at the hotel in Florence, Italy when lowly Mr Emerson not only speaks to the ladies without being addressed, but has the audacity to offer up his room (which had a view) was quite a clear introduction as to what themes the novel was going to be exploring.

This is a love story set between classes. I am not going to go into my dislike of instant love here because my opinion doesn't really differ with most folks' out there. I will say, however, that I couldn't really believe that the two 'destined to be together' even really felt more than a fond acquaintance for one another. Especially from Lucy's perspective, as the reader follows her through the novel, and not 'the other'.

Oddly enough, the character I enjoyed reading about the most was Lucy's cousin, Charlotte Bartlett. She was delightfully false, verbally coming across as self-sacrificing, and yet not. Take the trip to the country, where she refused utterly to sit on the mat/blanket (whatever it was) and chose the wettest patch of grass and then coughed and spluttered, insisting that sitting on the wet grass was not the cause at all and would not make her sick, until Lucy got up and left them, making a mat vacant. She was like this throughout the novel, but it was only towards the end, that one realised that there was a lot more to her. I have a feeling that I might have actually preferred reading her story than this one.

There was some beautiful writing again in this book. But I suppose that is a mark of a classic. Books are unlikely to become classics if they are shoddily written.

“Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.”

― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads. Now this is where I must admit that rating books does not make sense. Anna Karenina has stuck with me for 3 weeks (at the time of writing this), where as this book has barely made an impact. But it was more enjoyable - but maybe that says more about me, and less about the quality of Anna Karenina.