An occasionally tedious book on the importance of making your own decisions and living life following principles you've set for yourself, not ones that society has set for you.

Not Forster's most elegant or enjoyable work. A bit on the preachy side.

As a limited but interesting point of comparison, this is a little like a novel version of The Education of Henry Adams. Unlike Adams, the protagonist here is educated on the cusp of the 20th century rather than on the pinnacle of 19th century thinking. However, the lapse of time in between has changed little. The protagonist here struggles to apply his Cambridge education to a changing world and to apply himself to meaningful work. The choices he faces as a teacher and something of an idealist in adapting to what the modern world presents were interesting to me – especially since like me the protagonist has a disability.

Forster is unrelenting in pointing out how ready people are to settle into uncomfortable and inconsistent routine rather than really examining assumptions. The thoughtful reader, perhaps, will be frightened how ready the writer is to lock his characters into the path cut by a single choice over several years. He is actually willing to skip time that he doesn't think matters, that in his view is simply a result of a choice two years ago. While sober in this technique, he is also adept at stepping back and pointing out with some gentleness the frailties of his human characters.

This is why they make jokes about the Bloomsbury set. Pissing awful.

"She minded her husband more, not less; and when at last he died, and she saw a glorious autumn, beautiful with the voices of boys who should call her mother, the end came for her as well, before she could remember the grave in the alien north and the dust that would never return to the dear fields that had given it".

And thus, with the end of this long journey, comes my completion of all 6 of E. M. Forster's novels.
I adore Forster's literary voice.
That being said, 'The Longest Journey' will not be taking its place as one of my favourite Forster novels. I did not find it a particularly compelling story. The poetry and depth that I know Forster for were just not there enough.
To me, he shines, above all, is his description, whether he's exploring the lethargic streets of Florence, the eerie caves of Marabar, or even the misty beauty of the forests of Hartforshire.
Over my lifetime, I will return to many of his books, but (although I'm happy to have read it) this will not necessarily be one of them.

I love EM Forster and I loved this novel. It felt like there was something deeply personal about it, and I read it at a time where I connected with it a lot. I’m very used to seeing both this novel and Forster criticized but I don’t see why. I love this book. It’s one of my favorites and I’d read it again in a heartbeat.

Frustrating, brilliant, confusing, mesmerising - just a few of a collection of different adjectives I could use to describe a multiplicity of passages from this book. I felt as if Rickie’s death was far too sudden and whilst I understood his social death at the hands of Agnes and Mr Pembroke, I did not feel as if this was entirely evident whilst it was occurring. This is without doubt an interesting read and is filled with delightful passages, stuffed to the brim with floury language and marvellous metaphors, but it certainly isn’t the masterpiece Forster perhaps thought it was.

I can definitely see why this is one of Forster's most unpopular books. I felt literally nothing for it, either positive or negative. I couldn't understand what the overall message was - on one hand, Rickie's death scene seems to be strongly arguing for the pointlessness of passion and the need to subscribe to society's boring ideals. On the other, the last chapter with Stephen seems to argue the opposite point. Is the point then to be born as someone like Stephen and not Rickie? If so, that's pretty disappointing.
The treatment of Rickie's clubfoot and his 'lame' daughter was quite interesting, mostly as examples of how negatively disabled people are viewed, as well as the very, very few instances of Agnes lamenting the patriarchy, but otherwise I felt nothing for this book.

"There is, indeed, another coinage that bears on it not man's image but God's. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it safely; it will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us friends, or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for with our fellow mortals it has no concern.... Have we learnt the true discipline of a bankruptcy if we turn to such coinage as this? Will it really profit us so much if we save our souls and lose the whole world?" (E.M. Forster, "The Longest Journey")

"The Longest Journey" is a poetic but somewhat bleak novel. Forster is an excellent writer, and his prose is lyrical and stunning. He poses large philosophical questions throughout the book, not just to his characters but to his readers. Like his other novels, this story is intensely character driven, and packed with a vast array of colorful personalities that make this just as engaging as it is heartbreaking. It is a bit slow in the middle, but still an excellent work of fiction. Recommended.

It is easier to say what this novel isn't than the other way around. It isn't a comedy of manners—drama and tragedy all around. It isn't a romance—love and marriage, turns out, don't go together like a horse and carriage. It isn't a campus novel, despite its school settings, or a critique of the English in Italy or India. Anyone looking for another Italian romp will be disappointed.

What it is is a story rife with family secrets and class distinctions and an exploration of what it means to live authentically. To get married, or not, to believe in God, or not, to live according to convention, to value money, or intellect, or to think nothing of any of it. Is there a middle ground? Prone to fainting Rickie Elliot is a bit of a prig—enter coarse Stephen to show him the light.

For not being a romance novel, I do like what it had to say about romantic love:

n  There are men and women—we know it from history—who have been born into the world for each other, and for no one else, who have accomplished the longest journey locked in each other's arms. But romantic love is also the code of modern morals, and, for this reason, popular. Eternal union, eternal ownership—these are tempting baits for the average man. He swallows them, will not confess his mistake, and —perhaps to cover it- cries "dirty cynic" at such a man as Stephen.n

And just about life in general:

n  He knew once for all that we are all of us bubbles on an extremely rough sea. Into this sea humanity has built, as it were, some little breakwaters—scientific knowledge, civilized restraint—so that the bubbles do not break so frequently or so soon. But the sea has not altered...n

I clearly didn't hate it, and having read it on the heels of Richard Yates's Young Hearts Crying, I was surprised at the number of parallels I was able to draw given all that separates them.

I think this might be an early work by Forster--it doesn't have the weight of some of his more well-known books, but it's interesting to read nonetheless. It's mostly concerned with a sort of killing of the soul when one submits to the wrong relationships and the wrong world, something that must happen every day. I think I may have been a little resistant to some of the characters because I didn't respond to them the way Forster maybe did.

For instance, I couldn't help but feel like there was a sort of idealism of rather ignorant, abusive men as being more natural as opposed to the dreamier, lame protagonist. I also confess I felt at the beginning of the book that the relationship between Rickie and his friend Ansell read as totally romantic. The book sets up the rivalry between Ansell and Rickie's wife Agnes as one of character and values, but it was hard for me to not think there was a romantic aspect to it as well given the specific yet vague ways that Ansell loomed over his life.

There were also a few moments where I laughed out loud where I wasn't supposed to--basically any time a character unexpectedly dropped dead, which happened a lot.

(4) part classics, part opera, part philosophy

2.5/5
Marking as finished, though I still have the afterward and other extra content to read in this copy. Uuuuh, so this was kind of a slog. I just did not care about the characters. I would have liked the themes, symbols, and irony more had I been more attached to and engaged in the characters and their lives. It wasn't even that I didn't like them, it's that they were so boring and there wasn't anything standing out about them. When I first started it I was really into it but I've been juggling too many things at once and letting too much time pass as I'm going through books individually. So, there's a chance I would have liked this more but honestly I'm not so sure. I still marked things as I was reading and there were some passages I really liked. I'm sorry, Forster, I don't quite like your favorite novel that you wrote and the one that is most inspired/influenced by your real life, but I'm still going to go through all your work. And I do want to learn more about Forster, particularly with how this is considered semi-autobiographical. I likely will gain more appreciation and liking in hindsight after researching more and reading the supplementary content.