A Room With A View, by E. M. Forster

This is my second time reading this since high school--prompted by a recent viewing of the 1980's film adaptation with Helena Bonham Carter.  I like Howards End even better, but A Room with a View is very fun read too.  It's a romantic comedy about Lucy Honeychurch, an upper middle class, rather sheltered young lady, who goes on a tour of Italy with her proper spinster Aunt Charlotte, and who has her horizons widened, and not just by the art and architecture.  She meets a variety of different people, not the least of which are two very different young men:  George Emerson, a passionate young railway clerk, beneath her in class, but to whom her thoughts keep reverting despite herself, and Cecil Vyse, a wealthy aesthete who would make a respectable husband for a girl of her station.  Which will she choose? 

E.M. Forster has a talent for showing the state of mind of his characters by subtle details in their behavior or reactions, with nothing overplayed or forced such that everything seems natural yet significant.

Howards End, by E. M. Forster

This is a re-read for me, prompted after watching the Emma Thompson/Anthony Hopkins movie based on it.  Howards End is the name of an old country house in England that is the childhood home of Ruth Wilcox, to whose family it has belonged for generations.  She has a deep love for her family home and land, and the traditions of the village where she was born.  It makes her something of the odd woman out in her family, since her husband, a wealthy industrialist, and adult children are all very modern and practical in their tastes and outlook on life.  They befriend the Schlegels, upper middle class intellectuals who value education and cultural pursuits, and who have formed a friendship with Leonard Bast, a lower class clerk who aspires to become more intellectually and culturally learned.  The book is about how these three groups of people interact with each other, and who will end up inheriting Howards End (which could be thought of as a symbol for England in general) after Ruth Wilcox's death. 

The book is enjoyable and can be read on several different levels.  The movie is very well done too, and quite close to the original storyline.