‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، این استانِ عاشقانه از 430 صفحه تشکیل شده است... داستان در موردِ دختری انگلیسی و جوان به نامِ <لوسی هانی چرچ> میباشد.. لوسی به همراهِ دخترخاله اش <شارلوت بارتلت> به فلورانسِ ایتالیا سفر میکنند تا از زیبایی هایِ آنجا دیدن کنند.. در هتل، اتاقی که به آنها میدهند، چشم اندازِ پنجره اش زیبا نیست، بنابراین آقایِ امرسن و پسرِ جوانش <جورج> اتاقشان را که چشم اندازی زیبا دارد را با آنها جابجا میکنند و اینگونه لوسی و جورج با یکدیگر آشنا میشوند.. جورج یک نه صد دل دلباختهٔ لوسی شده است، ولی شارلوت مخالفِ دوستی آنهاست، تا آنکه یک روز در فضای سبزِ اطرافِ فلورانس، جورج بوسه ای آتشین از لبهایِ لوسی میگیرد... آنجا ماجرا میگذرد و لوسی و جورج دیگر همدیگر را ندیده و لوسی و دخترخاله اش نیز تعطیلات را به پایان رسانده و به خانه بازمیگردند
‎جوانی به نامِ <سیسیل وایز> از لوسی خواستگاری میکند، و لوسی نیز این درخواست را قبول میکند.. همه چیز به آرامی در حالِ گذر است، تا آنکه آقایِ امرسن و پسرش جورج، برایِ زندگی به دهکدهٔ کوچکِ لوسی و خانواده اش سفر میکنند و در ویلایی نزدیک به خانهٔ لوسی ساکن میشوند
‎جورج خیلی زود با <فردی> برادرِ لوسی آشنا شده و با هم به گردش و بازی میپردازند.. و اینگونه پایِ جورج به خانهٔ لوسی بازمیشود.. سیسیل مدام در پیِ خواندنِ کتاب است، او هیچ چیزی از رفتارِ دلربایانه با جنسِ زن را نمیداند و حتی بوسیدنِ لب را نیز به درستی انجام نمیدهد.. خلاصه همه چیز دست به دستِ هم میدهد تا لوسی برایِ تصمیم به ازدواجش با سیسیل دچارِ شک شود... از سویِ دیگر، جورج دوباره لبهایِ او را میبوسد، لوسی با آنکه لذت میبرد، ولی جورج را از خویش میراند
‎جورج و پدرش که از لوسی ناامید شده اند، قرار است تا آنجا را برایِ همیشه ترک کنند... لوسی هم از سیسیل جدا شده و با آنکه جورج را دوست دارد، ولی نمیداند چه تصمیمی بگیرد
‎عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این داستان را خوانده و از سرانجامِ داستانِ جورج و لوسی، دو جوانِ سرشار از شور و دلدادگی، آگاه شوید
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‎بعضی وقتها، چیزهایِ بیشرمانه نیز میتواند زیبا باشد
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‎فقط یک چیز هست که غیرِ ممکنه، و اون اینه که عاشق باشی و از معشوق دور بمونی
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‎کسانی که میفهمن، چه چیزی و چه کسی براشون مناسبه، خیلی خوش شانس هستن و این یک موهبتِ بزرگه
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‎کشیش ایگر: این حقیقت رو در موردِ کلیسایِ سانتا کروچه به یاد داشته باشید، که این کلیسا در قرونِ وسطی، با ایمانِ کامل ساخته شد
‎آقای امرسن: راست میگه، با ایمانِ کامل ساخته شد، معنیِ این جمله اینه که به کارگرهایِ بیچاره برایِ ساختِ کلیسا، دستمزدِ خوبی نمیدادن
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
‎<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>

What happens in Florence, stays in Florence.

Unless this is the early 1900's and you're visiting the city with your annoying spinster cousin, then you kiss some boy in a field of violets for like two seconds and nobody ever lets you forget it. Jeez, people.

This is a brief, sweet little novel about Lucy Honeychurch (winner of the prestigious award for Most Adorable Name Ever), who goes to Florence with previously-mentioned spinster cousin. Despite lack of A ROOM WITH A VIEW, Lucy has a very nice time, sees some artwork, does some self-discovery, and smooches a very unsuitable boy (escandalo!) who might be a Socialist (double escandalo!). Then they go back to England and she gets engaged to a schmuck.

For this part of the novel, I was mostly coasting along, having a reasonably good time reading about well-off English people and their Well-Off English People Problems ("Our Italian pension is owned by a Cockney lady! So-and-so isn't the right kind of blandly religious! And for the love of God WHO WILL YOU MARRY?!"). It was mildly entertaining, and I was a huge fan of Mr. Emerson from the get-go. George, sadly, never quite did it for me, and Lucy I found to be kind of boring until, UNTIL, the glorious moment when she breaks up with her lame fiance and gets awesome. Here's part of her breakup speech:

"When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me...I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? ...you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I won't be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. That's why I break off my engagement."

Bella Swan, are you paying attention? Because this concerns you.

After that moment, I was suddenly 100% invested in Lucy and her attempts to figure herself out. Maybe I imagined it, but it seemed like the writing became so much more beautiful after that, and I was reading the story more carefully and with more interest than I had before. It was a slow start, but Forster's fantastic characters managed to win me over in the end (yes, even the annoying spinster cousin).

Some emergency teacher I had one day between the ages of twelve and fourteen told the class about a thing called ‘active reading’. From memory, she engaged us in exercises for predicting and anticipating what is ahead and hence we read both faster, and fuller, absorbing more of the text in this way. Now, I’m not sure what kind of prose she based this idea on, but her ideas came back to me while reading Room with a View. But I realised the opposite of what she was saying. I realised that predictable sentences and action suggest the book isn’t worth reading. I mean, why do you need to read a book if it sets out to fulfil your expectations? Shouldn’t a book (of some literary credibility) aim to introduce something fresh and new and provide an expansive experience?

I realised then why I toss books aside or glance at pages of new books in a bookshop only to abandon them. And until now I couldn’t put a finger on what it was that made me discard a book quickly – it was the predictability of the author’s writing. I realised too, that this applied as much today to award winning books as it did to books of genre where predictability is intended. Perhaps writing schools teach this sort of thing, to give the reader what they want, that way you satisfy them. And the common denominator of consumer satisfaction is achieved. So, a $25 book can only give you its cover price value. It can't give you any more than that.

I had disregarded EM Forster for years based on how much I didn’t like A Passage to India and how his books were caught up the Merchant-Ivory film experience. (That and he seemed like yet another English toff member of a Bloomsbury group, something I heard about but ignored in my modern literature studies years ago).

I ended up reading A View because I was reading Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance (1860), the book that gave the world the term Renaissance and a book Forster would’ve known. I thought I had read this book years ago, but couldn’t be certain.

But I was wrong about Forster. I love the writing, though, it’s not an easy read, Forster does something interesting with his syntax and the rhythm of his sentences. They are full of detail, building on details and internally and externally allusive. Good writers like Forster keep me going over the sentences and thinking backwards and forwards through the book for its meaning and the possibilities of the destination (or no destination at all). Forster writes unpredictable sentences, takes my reading experience to places I didn’t expect, works language intelligently and dramatically, and offers more than the price of the book sale. So, the book is no candidate for active reading in the sense my teacher tried to teach. But you do need to read with all your senses and an open mind.

A View is expertly structured. Florence first part, rural-suburban England second part. There are doublings and couplings everywhere (a kind of Shakespearian technique). There’s the Miss Alans, the sisters referred to in singular form, though you know there are two. Pairs of travellers – Lucy Honeychurch and her elder cousin, Miss Bartlett, two Emersons, father and son. Two rooms each in the pension Bertolini. Miss Lavish appears as herself in Italy and with a nom de plume in the second part. There are two sides visible in people, the one that polite society thinks of you and the part you actually are. So, Mr Henderson is both a wife murderer in the eyes of the ridiculously opinionated Beebe because he can easily define and categorise a man with a working-class background. On the other hand, Mr Emerson is wise, polite and considered. Lucy Honeychurch is told what to think of him and his son. But she seems capable from the early pages to see more in people. She has a more direct route to understanding people. If only she was left alone to have and explore her own reactions to people. She has a passion stirring in her that we see in her playing of the piano. Perhaps she is the woman emerging from the constraints of Victorian England, too. Though this direct path to her emotions, clearly evident to the reader early on, will be thwarted by class, circumstances and the inability for people to know what they want in the society she grows up in. And Florence has two sides, too. On the one hand it is considered by our English tourists as the place of culture, art, a high point in human development. Yet its people are venal and base (according to these same English), violent (there is a significant murder in a square). And as I recently learned reading Burckhardt, all this high culture of the 15thC was earned after the violent, tyrannical 14thC where individualism was borne off the back violent ascensions to power on the Italian peninsula.

Chapter fifteen is so brilliant, bringing together so many elements of the story, pairing incidents, referencing itself expertly, as the story approaches its comedic resolution. (Not a funny ending, but comedy in the sense of Shakespeare’s comedies where all the elements are brought together in happy conclusion.)

That’s just one little element I noticed in the story. There are many others. A good read. An active read, but not in the way my teacher explained. You want to read a book like this for the depth of its thinking and style. Thankfully, I’ve had the chance to see it for what it is. Like Lucy sees who she loves more clearly (Shakespearean play on words intended).

I have a copy of Where Eagles Fear to Tread on the shelf for the future.

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n  “I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”n

A Room with a View evokes a gentle Edwardian idyll: we follow the story's characters through their paced long walks, their wanderings through Italy (in Florence there is the lovely view of the River Arno, Basilica of Santa Croce, Piazza della Signoria, and later on in Fiesole's high fields Lucy, our main character, will undergo a life changing experience), and observe them in their British ‘habitat'.
Forster's lulling prose hums with a quiet sort of energy. His descriptions of Italy and of Lucy's family home—Windy Corner—located in Surrey are incredibly expressive. As an Italian I was amused by the way in which my country, its culture and its people, are viewed as 'other' by English tourists such as Lucy's disapproving older cousin and chaperone, Miss Charlotte Bartlett. Italy seems to them less civil than their beloved Britain...yet they are unable to deny the power of its history.

n  “Are not beauty and delicacy the same?”n

Through Miss Bartlett and the other guests of the Pension Bertolini, Forster epitomises the English tourist: they all seem disdainful of other English tourist yet they are themselves unable to connect with the various landscapes they visit. In spite of their reservations Lucy and George feel a strange pull to one another, and Forster describes their growing feelings with a restraint reminiscent of the society they lived in. A lot remains unsaid, and the reader has to read between the lines in order to glimpse Lucy's affection for George.

The seemingly mild story provides us with plenty of amusing portraits. And yet, Forster's satire never comes across as harsh or exaggerated. He seem to be gently poking fun at certain personalities without turning his characters into mere clichés or reducing them to satirical caricatures.
Forster has an ear for the way people speak, so that the various conversations exchanged between his characters ring brilliantly true to life. He also reproduces the cadence of speech with such clarity that by the end I could recognise a character by the way they spoke. There is also a sense that sometimes words do not suffice but also that if they do one is not allowed to express exactly what they would like to....because of this there are misunderstandings, understatements, and long pauses.
Forster also imbues his characters with an abundance of personality so that regardless of their role in the story—whether they are the protagonists or an 'extra'—they are rendered memorable by their various quirks and manners.

An enjoyable tale that combines a forbidden attraction with an exploration of freedom, art, and travel, as well as a humorous take of English society during the Edwardian period, A Room with a View makes for the perfect escapist read.

A Room with a View is a story of love, a story of self-realization of a young woman, and a story of the Edwardian English society still governed by strict Victorian values. Written at the beginning of the Edwardian era, Forster critically exposes the cultural restrictions, class differences, and rigidly maintained social status that had swallowed the English society. The story is set up in England and Italy and Forster with his crafty and witty writing style draws a comparison between English cultural rigidity and Italian cultural relaxation.

The opening of the book is a scene in a pension in Italy, where a group of English tourists who, being in a foreign country, were still divided by class. There was the assumption that George Emerson was a porter just because he works on the railway, although in fact, he is a clerk. And he is outrightly considered a cad because of his “lower” class and somewhat relaxed behavior toward those who are stifled by convention. The old Emerson who speaks out his mind freely is considered vulgar by the “respected” English. Although civility is maintained on the face of it, the Emersons are ignored and isolated for the most part because of the highly revered concept of “class difference”. I was genuinely struck by the severity of this division and enjoyed Forster’s exhibition of displeasure through his witty writing.

The focus of the story is a young woman named Lucy and her journey of finding both herself and love. It is not an easy journey, as she has to hurdle through strong social barriers. The inner struggle that she goes through is the struggle of young men and especially young women in Edwardian society, being torn between strict conventions and emerging modern opinions. Forster is radical. He mocks the Victorian perceptions to which strings the old generation still held fast and supports the view of mixed-class marriages in the wake up of a new middle class which was steadily brought forth by industrialization.

Forster’s writing is both poetic and picturesque. He draws us into a world that is beautiful notwithstanding its imperfections, petty differences, and minor annoyances and irritations. There is also irony and humour. And Forster’s use of symbology, subtly or otherwise, is simply marvelous. The sun, the river, the mountains, fields of violets, Italy, the water, the playing of music – everything has its own mystery, its own workings on the human mind. Forster has captured this beautifully and sincerely.

The most important however is the “view”. When the young Lucy who belongs to the upper-middle class arrives at the Italian pension, she finds her room has no view. Forster tells us that that should be just. Overprotected and bound by conventions, chaperoned by an old lady who worships Victorian ideals, Lucy has no “view”. But the Emersons, who represent the newly emerging working class have a “view”. The newly learned working class is slowly adapting themselves to the new modern way of thinking, and they are no longer weighed down by conventions. So, they have a “view.” Lucy, still at the impressionable age, falls for young Emerson with a “view”, but it is nipped in the bud by the Victorian chaperon. And the flower to which Lucy was to be bloomed was handed to the upper-class Cecil who is in a closed room with no “view” whereby the flower slowly withers. But sunlight, water, love, and joys of youth come to the rescue and present Lucy with a solid and lasting “room with a view”.

A Room with a View undoubtedly is one of the masterpieces that I have had the privilege to read. It is complete; it is perfect.

3 Stars for A Room With A View (audiobook) by E. M. Forster read by Frederick Davidson.

It’s hard for me to get my mind around how different a time this was. It’s almost like a fantasy story about a place that you’ll never get to visit and a people with customs that you’ll never understand.

Forster is the last Edwardian. When I read him, I feel I can sense him wrestling with the same incommunicable subjectivity that the modernists would soon try to communicate by means of a drastic change in prose form. But Forster doesn't take that final step. He takes fiction up to the precipice of subjective psychology, but ultimately stays in the classical mode, pointing down towards this vast mystery that he cannot put into words.

So the predominant feeling in A Room With A View is a sort of freighted vagueness. When characters fall short, they are ‘tried by some new test’; when Lucy, the heroine, is high-strung she is seized by ‘some emotion—pity, terror, love’; when she goes wrong, she is ‘full of some vague shame’.

Some test, some emotion, some shame. Never any specifics – just this emotive haze of indistinction.

In Forster's world, tellingly, the ultimately enemy is not class or patriarchy or snobbishness (though he writes well against all these things), but rather – and how Edwardian is this! – ‘muddle’.

‘Take an old man's word: there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and all the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things that I might have avoided.’

The end point of all this is the disinterested ‘ou-boum’ of the Malabar Caves in Forster's final novel. Italy, for Forster, is not quite as foreign as India, and so the muddle doesn't have quite the same cosmic awesomeness that we get in A Passage to India, but it's the same general idea. There is things in our experience of life that we can't explain, or even understand, but whose contours we sometimes sense.

I would usually find it trite to equate this kind of unsayability with an author's own sexuality, but in Forster's case it really feels hard to avoid it, when so many of his characters are struggling with attractions and emotions that they won't allow themselves to understand. In some ways it's a more effective way of capturing this subjectivity than the modernists managed.

At times the social conventions at play here are almost as tiresome for the modern reader as they are for some of the characters – but Forster's ability to express the inexpressibility of life remains completely fascinating, and about as close as you can get to living it yourself.

حكاية كلاسيكية تقليدية، ترتسم بهدوء وبطء في زمن ينتمي إلى الحقبة الفائتة، أما شخوصها فمعتادة وشبيهة بكل روايات المجتمع الإنكليزي.

" لقد توسعت مداركها؛ أحست أنه لا يوجد أي شخص لا يمكنها أن تحبه، وأن الحواجز الاجتماعية كانت عصية على الإزالة دون شك، ولكنها ليست عالية على نحو خاص. يمكنك القفز من فوقها كما تقفز إلى حقل زيتون لفلاح في جبال الأبنين الإيطالية، ويكون هو سعيداً برؤيتك. لقد عادت بعينين جديدتين. "

لكن - ودون أن يتناقض ذلك - مع سلاستها وهدوئها الظاهري، فباطنها يخبئ الكثير من الزوابع والصراعات المكتومة؛ بين محاولات الثبات والنهوض مجدداً من أجل الاستقلالية الأنثوية، والتشتت بين ما يمليه المجمتع وما تميل إليه الروح، تدور أحداث القصة المعروفة .. وعلى الرغم من ذلك فقد اسمتعت بها واستهوتني بساطتها كما كل كلاسيكيات القرن الماضي.

" كم من النادر أن يُرد على الحب بالحب ... هذه واحدة من اللحظات التي صُنع العالم من أجلها. "

Rating: Good

Genre: Classic

A Room with a View is a story about classes. The first half takes place in Florence, Italy and the second half takes place in England. In Florence, Lucy Honeychurch is visiting Italy with her older cousin Charlotte. At their pension, they want a room with a view that looks into the river Arno. Mr. Emerson and his son George offer them their own rooms but Charlotte gets offended because they are from a lower class. Later Lucy has more encounters with the father and son before she leaves Italy and one kiss changes everything! When Cecil Vyse gets in the picture, he proposes to Lucy, and she accepts. But Cecil is not fond of Lucy’s family and the lower class people she knows. Lucy finds herself struggling between the free-spirited George and the snobbish Cecil, between a system where different classes are separated and a system where all the classes mix together.

Although this book is not long it took me longer than I thought to finish it. The language was not difficult but I felt so many words were used to describe so little. Sometimes things were confusing and I had no idea where the story was heading or what was happening. I appreciate what this might have offered to the world of literature back then but the talk of classes in our times is not that relevant anymore so I feel this classic will feel somehow dated. I remember watching the movie adaptation a long time ago but cannot say it stayed in my memory. The characters are well developed and Lucy’s character is the strongest one in my opinion. I expected to love this book more than I did but that does not change the fact that it is a good book even if it bored me at times.

Considered by many to be Forster's sunny day, and most optimistic novel, would start off in Italy, an Inn in Florence to be precise. Two sweet Edwardian females, Miss Lucy Honeychurch (adorable name) and her cousin, Charlotte the chaperone have a bit of a dilemma whilst holidaying, the silly Inn keeper promised them rooms with a view looking out onto the Arno River, but they end up facing the courtyard. (I would have gladly faced the courtyard if it meant being a Tuscan tourist, would have even bedded down in the cellar come to think of it, rats and all). But as luck would have it, two budding hero's come to the rescue. Mr. Emerson, an old man seated with them at dinner suggests that Lucy and Charlotte trade rooms with him and his son, George, which, after first being rather offended at the proposal are advised to do by the Reverend Beebe, a clergyman staying in the same place, who is soon to become the vicar of Lucy's Parish back in Surrey, England.

The early part of the novel really showcases Forster's use of dialogue, that finds a good balance between beauty and delicacy, between honesty and propriety. When Lucy ventures out into Florence with the romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, she runs into the Emersons at the church of Santa Croce. Speaking bluntly, Lucy is torn between accepting kindness and taking offense of the attention, when asked by Mr. Emerson to befriend his son George, Lucy becomes uncomfortable, and hides any emotion, could it be that she is already prematurely in love with someone she only recently met? Especially after she witnesses an altercation, which ends up with her falling into George's arms after a fainting episode.

The novel's second half picks up some months later in Surrey, in a house named Windy Corner. The house belongs to the Honeychurch family. And it now appears Lucy has gained entry to an even better society, with that of the sour Cecil Vyse, who has been granted Lucy's hand in marriage (no, Lucy, don't do it!!). Cecil is an imbecile, and sees Lucy as nothing more than a work of art, something to show off, like a fancy antique painting. At heart he is a snob, he just doesn't realize it.
It also becomes apparent Cecil has two so called friends, yes, the Emersons!, who arrive back on the scene after a property becomes available on Summer Street, all to the fury of Lucy, who would go on to call off the engagement (good girl!), but not for the love of George. Er..of course not my dear.

The acutely observed characters feel so real in this novel and he breathes life into them in such a humane way, although I didn't like them all, it was a pleasure to be in their company. Lucy is quite possibly the most fully fleshed, so much so that even when she lies to herself and to those around her, I found myself sympathizing with her situation instead of condemning her actions. Among many things, A Room with a View is a coming of age story about one young woman's entry into adulthood, and the struggles that face Lucy as she emerges as her own woman, growing from indecision to fulfillment. She is torn between strict, old-fashioned Victorian values and newer, more liberal morals. In the tussle her own idea of what is true evolves and matures.

George, troubled by an existential crisis at such a young age, doesn't understand how life can be truly joyful and fulfilling, and seemed shadowed by a dark enigma and a has a question mark above his head. The two are united by a shared appreciation for beauty, which might be captured in their love of views: Lucy adored the view of the Arno, whilst George remembers a time of with his parents gazing at a view. Each possesses what the other needs, it just takes some soul-searching for them to realize it. George finds simple pleasure in the company of the Honeychurchs, Lucy finds an inner courage to recognize her own individuality through time spent with the Emersons.

The story did meander here and there in places, but the novels strength definitely lies in its vivid cast of characters, especially the deep exploration of Lucy's attitude towards life and love. With some great humorous dialogue, and a playful nature, I was very impressed indeed!

Tourists. That is what we have here. Tourists from another century. But at any time, who loves tourists? They can be, well, irritating. I remember in America's bicentennial year, they descended on Boston. "The Freedom Trail" - an endless ribbon of red painted footprints on sidewalks to show the way to historic sites - was clogged with wanderers. Eventually, the city got more red paint and connected the prints into a line. That moved them along better. They stopped trying to fit their feet into the prints. Tourists. Could anyone make us want to read about them? This writer can.

Unlike so many other classics, this one is short. My Bantam Classic is wallet size and just 204 pages.
If that doesn't tempt you, there is the movie of course for all those flouncy skirts and piles of hair on top of Lucy's head as played by Helena Bonham Carter to inspire you to reach for the original. But most of all, it is the writing. Forster strips bare the posturing of his refined tourists and shows them for what they are. Human beings with flaws. Not the terrible or damning flaws. No, these flaws are the embarrassing and funny sort. This, in his masterful way, is how Forster gets us as readers to care about these tourists so we follow them home after their bags are unpacked. And we wait for them to find love and happiness which is the most you can wish for anyone.

When Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Florence she’s feeling peevish and disappointed. After travelling abroad for the first time Lucy finds their little hotel filled with fellow Britons, and even the woman in charge speaks English with a Cockney accent. What’s the point of leaving England if you’re still surrounded by the same people? Plus, Lucy and her chaperoning cousin were promised rooms with a view of the Arno river, and instead their accommodations look over a courtyard. But when a rough around the edges man and his enigmatic son offer to switch rooms, Lucy’s horrified, uptight, passive-aggressive cousin (played by Maggie Smith in the 1985 movie) is sure that would NOT be proper. Lucy (portrayed in the film by Helena Bonham Carter) wavers, confused. Where is the balance between embracing experience and living within the rules of propriety? If I could give A Room with a View more than 5 stars I would. E. M. Forster writes beautifully, and he tells Lucy’s story with both sympathy and insight.

I’ve been wanting to re-read this for a while, and got to it in January 2016 as part of the Dead Writers Society Literary Birthday challenge.