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Summary: What a Sappy Book!
Review: If you like Dirty Harry, Terminator or Rocky, don't read this book!!! This book will lull you to sleep. On the plus side, it is written extremely well, but that does not make it easy to read. Skip this one and go on to The Great Gatsby.
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Summary: Hate Classics? This book may change that opinion
Review: E.M. Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW is a sensible book for anti-classic readers but still manages to have a sort of hidden meaning. I just loved how Lucy over turned the snobbiness of her and her upperclass relatives and ended up loving the quiet, meek, and shy middle classer. This is a beautiful classic tale of two men fighting for a woman, you can't miss out on this!
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Summary: My opinion:
Review: The first two thirds of the book are well written and entertaining and the last third is magical. The minute the Emersons come back to England, Forster just takes off. I don't know what happens, but suddenly the book becomes amazing and beautiful. You're reading along, and then you hit Mr. Beebe and George and Freddy swimming in "the sacred lake" and then the rest of the book speeds by and the suddenly it's over. I loved this book. I love George Emerson. My favorite scene is when he throws her postcards in the stream.
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Summary: Best of Forster's early works
Review: Even though this book goes along the same tune as Madame Bovary, in here is a young and flightly female who being youthful, has not experienced love, hate, and many basic emotions. This is a very fine tuned book with realistic and dreamy characters. I found the author's Howard's End rather dull written, and even A Passage to India quite too daring, A Room With A View is a fabulous light read, a simple book but not for the simple minded.
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Summary: An excellent book (and a great movie besides)
Review: I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Best of all, this is one of the very very few books to be made into a movie and come out unscathed, perhaps even improved in certain aspects. If you can't stand to take a chance and read it, see the film at least. Yes, the premise is somewhat similar to Madame Bovary. However, I found the difference between them to be that I hated Mme. Bovary and adored A Room With a View. To clarify, there is a part in the latter where Forster, discussing some sonatas of Bethoveen writes, "they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph." Flaubert plays on the side of despair, while Forster, like his character, "loved to play on the side of Victory." All of the characters are vividly drawn. They speak as real people speak and act as real people act, or once did. The language and mores have changed since the Victorian era, but they are motivated by similar things to those that motivate people today and they are fully-developed. Forster has the knack of describing his characters in a few well-turned sentences that tell you all you need to know to picture them. They get themselves into situations you can believe, and they do not always act in their own best interests, just like real life. I have re-read this book several times over the past 10 years, and what strikes me is how much detail Forster managed to sneak in with out making the book feel weighted or heavy. It is a light read, and yet every time I pick it up to reread it I find some new passage I had overlooked previously, each lovlier than the one before. He also makes some very interesting philosophical statements, without bogging down plot or pacing. Forster was obviously influenced by the Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau), one of the main characters is even named Emerson, so if they are of interest to you, this may be as well.
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Summary: You will wonder why it has been considered as great book.
Review: Maybe for its time, the novel was considered to contain ground breaking ideas, and a great drama. But you unless you are interest in social studies or the antrophological development of romance, you will find most of the situations downright silly. Maybe what particularly bothered me was that the writter did not make any significant effort to provide clues of why the characters fall in love. Actually, their attraction seems to be a mere infatution of inmature personalities, presented to the reader as a great romance.
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Summary: Charming
Review: This is a charming novel, and absolutely necessary reading if you are going to, or have already been to, Florence. (Although don't expect Florence to be as charming as is laid out here. It's a grimy, gritty city now). Forster is a refreshing optimist, even though, "Our life may be just a tiny knot on a thread of endless string," as he says it, or words to that effect. Having said that, I'm going to commit sacrilege and say that the movie was better. But the book is certainly worth while, too.
Rating:
Summary: the sheerest joy to read
Review: "A Room With a View" is, I believe, E.M. Forster at his best. His novel is immensely enjoyable to drift into again and again. Forster takes the reader by the hand and gleefully introduces her to a world of wonder and freedom, where all can be truly possible if you only follow your heart.
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Summary: Should be read and re-read
Review: One of Forster's earliest novels, Room with a View generally lacks the depth and literary importance that his later works justifiably claim. Nonetheless, it is astute, enjoyable, concise, and incredibly funny. A first reading isn't enough, really; I've read through the novel several times, and each time I find a new level of meaning, a new, ever more subtle layer of humor or sadness or pathos. What seems on the surface to be merely a cute story of a delayed romance turns out to be, on further inspection, a witty and relevant critique of English society and latent Victorian values.
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Summary: Passion against the grain
Review: A crafty love story, showing the passion of Victorian times, and how a cross-class love can be the best.
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