A Room with a View by E. M. Foster *****

Reading dates: 03 December 2013 – 03 January 2014

Readers of my blog will already have realised how much I enjoy short well written books. The general trend has been for me to wax lyrical every time something sparkian comes to the top of my reading pile, with Philip Roth edging endorsement last year as an outsider to the norm. E. M Foster’s novel may well be the outsider this year. Every scene in this novel is admirably crafted, vivid, full of character. It made me start to learn Italian and when the going gets hard (conjunctions are a nightmare), I think of Lucy at the Bertolini. The characters are wonderful and reading them aloud brought out their quirks. You see, if you read flat characters aloud you notice. When they are are alive with personality, you just want to bed early to start the performance. This is why I am now reading P. G. Wodehouse. The message of the story is a simple, yet very important one. This is a novel about love and about when one knows one loves. It is also a novel about society and gossip and about how people treat others who are a bit different. I know I am not telling you much. I couldn’t without revealing precisely what you will want to find out by yourself, the marvelous view.