Paperback, 242 pages
English language
Published Oct. 22, 1989 by Vintage.
First published in 1908, A Room with a View portrays the love of a British woman for an expatriate living in Italy. Caught up in a world of social snobbery, Forster's heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected boor. In the end, however, Lucy takes control of her own fate and finds love with a man whose free spirit reminds her of “a room with a view.”
Smart cozy skewering of English class and respectability, old Europe's wonder and modern sensibility, flipping effortlessly between interior mental changes and a range of characters observations with the author's judgement right alongside.
I picked up the book at random via Guthrnberg. I hoped it would be a social parody of pompous people, but after finishing chapter one I realised it is a chic flick made 100 years ago. Nothing wrong with chick flicks, but at this time this is not for me.
Gorgeous, romantic prose
I try to get swept away by the romance of it, and I enjoy Forster's writing a lot, but I just can't believe that two people can love each other enough to build a life together when they've had like three conversations with each other. I just can't suspend that disbelief. Maybe I really am aromantic.
It took me a good while to get in to this book. Because of all the old English tye writing, I wasn't sure what to think. I'm so glad that I finished this book, because I genuinely liked Lucy. I also wanted to know who she was going to end up wih. :)
I appreciate some of the wording, cultural commentary, and pithy lines, but the story and most of the dialogue was not gripping.
I may have enjoyed this more if I had read it on paper. I had misinterpreted the digital "page count" on the goodreads copy of the book and was expecting a much shorter piece. I can't handle reading books on an iPhone any longer than 150 (normal) pages.
