What makes this masterpiece a pure delight for contemporary readers is its vibrant portrait of life in Edwardian England, and the wonderful characters who inhabit the charming old country house in Hertfordshire called Howards End. This cozy house becomes the object of an inheritance dispute between the upright conservative Wilcox family and the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, sensitive and intuitive women loved by men willing to leap wide social barriers to fulfill their ardor. Through romantic entanglements, disappearing wills, and sudden tragedy, the conflict over the house emerges as a symbolic struggle for England’s future. Rich with the tradition, spirit, and wit distinctively English, Howards End is a remarkable novel of rare insight and understanding. As in his celebrated A Passage to India, E. M. Forster brings to vivid life a country and an era through the destinies of his unforgettable characters.
A marvelous novel, filled with asides that contain a great deal of wisdom but which are couched in the minds of various characters and in just enough sarcasm so that the reader must try to figure out what Forster himself thought of each issue. As I neared the end, I thought it might not all come together, and it would still have been a good book, but the ending is just perfect: Not too much, not too little.
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28 May, 2018:
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