Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorites.
Review: A very good story about the conflict between what we want to be and what others expect us to be. I liked this quite a bit better than "Howard's End."
Rating: 
Summary: ENTIRELY UNORIGINAL
Review: A Room With a View is hardly what you could consider fine, classic literature. The plot runs off of a much more dramatic and insightful classic, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The stories are the same: a woman, dissatisfied with her station in life, seeks happiness in an unorthodox way (namely a man) that entirely displeases her relatives and friends. The only difference is that Flaubert gives his heroine a realistically tragic end, while Forster opts for the happy, fairytale finale.It is this unoriginality, lack of plot depth, and dialogue reminiscent of a Hans Christian Anderson story that makes A Room With a View dissatisfying. Forster obviously felt the need to contribute a story that, with its tiresome protagonists and only somewhat interesting antagonists, would teach future writers one thing: change a famous writer's denouement around and you can gain all the fame and merit you could want off one piece of literature. Holly Burke, PhD. Georgetown U.
Rating:
Summary: A great read!!
Review: I had to read this book for my A-level english course and found that despite my expectations I actually enjoyed it. I found that I could relate well to a number of characters and was moved by the story of the development of a young and confussed girl. It really was a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring
Review: This novel has got to be one of the most sweetest, and romantic story that I have ever read. One could almost feel Lucy's joy for being in Italy, and her torment of trying to keep her feelings hidden.
If anyone loves a period romance, this is it.
Rating:
Summary: Captivatingly romantic!
Review: I have read this book over and over after first being inspired by the movie of the same title (do see it). It is a true book to curl up with and get completely entwined within its rapture! Beautifully romantic, humorous and moving in a perfectly described landscape that you can almost picture; between the very lines as you read.
Rating:
Summary: the greatest read ever
Review: i loved this book and have recommended it to everyone i know. forster captivates his reader by making them feel right there smack in the middle of the muddle between lucy and george. he carries out a kind of jane austen comic manner throughout the whole book, and you are just compelled to laughing. he describes his characters so meticulously, that you can just about relate each of them to a person in your own life. forster once said that he thought this novel was " slight, unambitious, and uninteresting " (gardner 403) but he was very mistaken. this novel is a light-hearted glimpse into the lives of the well refined english society and its unfortunate black sheeps. i especially enjoyed the way forster addressed the attraction between george and lucy, i've never read any book that has made me so thrilled at the end when the two lovers finally become one. of all forster's novels, i think this one is the funniest, most genuine, and heartwarming novel for any audience. i very highly recommend this novel
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful love-story
Review: I think the book is totally great. It's about love that can't be ignored or stopped and it has a happy ending. I think that one of the things the author tries to say with this book is that you sometimes should do what your feelings tell you to do. Just because a thing has been considered right or wrong for a long time, doesn't always mean that it actually is. The main character, a young English girl, has a hard time trying to figure out what she really feels inside. She loves but she is not sure if it is right of her to do so. The old English thoughts and beliefs influence her very much, but when she manages to get rid of a few of them, she shows her feelings more openly and is not ashamed of them.
I think this book is just as good as the old English classics, a well-written, overwhelming love-story
Rating:
Summary: It's simply gorgeous!
Review: I've read the book oh-so-many times and I've seen the movie twice. I love both versions to the extreme coz it's such a gorgeous story with gorgeous sceneries and characters. Everytime I read the book, I become entangled with Lucy's `muddled' (to quote Mr. Emerson in the book) emotions. It's hard not to, coz I for one, wouldn't want gorgeous George Emerson to slip from her fingers!
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular Reading by Joanna David
Review: It's hard to know which to praise more, E. M. Forester's witty comedy of manners, or Joanna David's nuanced and entertaining reading of the book. Clearly, the combination of the two is that rare marriage of great writing brought to life by a talented actress. If you only listen to one audio CD this year, you would do well to make it this one.
Forester writes about an England that is long gone . . . but not forgotten. The middle class has its wits and its respectability to defend itself from the vagaries of a challenging world. Naturally, the middle class prefers its own company and so-called manners are merely an excuse to keep everyone else at bay. The absurdity of this way of living is highlighted when Forester takes a young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch (don't you love that name?), off for a trip to Florence in the company of her maiden cousin, Charlotte, who also serves as chaperone.
A variety of English tourists are gathered in a small Italian pensione in Florence when Lucy and Charlotte arrive. Both women had asked for and been promised rooms with a view. Upon arrival, they got just the opposite. Complaining over dinner about this, two men, a father and his son, immediately offer to exchange rooms. This offer breaks most rules of good manners at the time, and the women turn down the kind, well-intentioned offer. Thus far can manners cause one to go against one's best interests. During their time in Florence, the women find themselves confounded and redirected by the honest helpfulness of the Emerson men. But the familiarity raises dangerous challenges for Lucy, and she flees their company.
The rest of the story looks at the consequences of the flight and focuses on Lucy's attempts to find a way of life that makes sense for her . . . rather than being a slave to social convention.
Describing the story's plot doesn't do justice to the witty satires and ironic comments about the pompously respectable. It's a delicious romp, and Ms. David makes it all the more so.
If you are like me, you'll find yourself racing to the end to find out what Lucy does with herself.
Rating:
Summary: Live like Beethoven
Review: A witty comedy with literature beauty which is expressed through the clever exchanges, personal thoughts and philosophic lines (but not causing your temple to creased). Lucy Honeychurch, a young girl from a bourgeois middle-up class, decided to look at the world by visiting Florence in spring time, chaperoned by her elder cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett. What was started by an argument about a room with a view developed into an impulsive kiss from George Emerson amid the violets thus ended the Florence period in a flight to Rome, away from the 'bold' suitor.
Now, George Emerson was not a brackish bold person. He was just a passionate one, who had deep feelings about anything and was in a distress mood over 'everything doesn't fit' and there was no reason for him to enjoy life, though he didn't intend to commit suicide. While his father is an outright-spoken person which didn't fit nicely with English stiff etiquette style. Together, they were misfits among English tourists in Florence's Bertolini Pension. But a murder scene just took place right before Lucy's eyes and George, coincidentally, was able to help her away from the mass. From then on, his dour view of the world was changed and he discovered the wanting to live his life and Lucy found some extend of the deep emotion of a George Emerson.
His impulse to kiss Lucy is understandable for a passionate guy, who was unprepared, caught the most beautiful sight of a lovely Lucy, who had revived him, among the violet blooming on the hill where you can have the best view of Florence. But unfortunately, the kiss was also seen by Miss Bartlett and that certainly put a chaos feeling to Lucy. Being forbidden to tell the accident to her mother or anyone else and fled to Rome the very next day, she did not have time to think her feeling over and quickly countered and proposed by Cecil Vyse, the son of her mother high society acquaintance in Rome.
The uncertainty, self-denial and buried feeling masked all her actions. The frivolity and passionate spirit that loved the Beethoven music just went under beneath the hypocrisy of 'clever' society standard. Would she discover her true self and feeling at the right time? Or should George go back to his previous gloomy state? What would the so called clever society think?
Find the funny but thoughtful lines in between and be invigorated by Beethoven!
|
