[3.5]
as always, full of beautiful prose -- some of my favourite by forster -- but not much else that stands out against his other work

Is this peak Forster? I think this may be peak Forster. There's unconventional relationships, awkward British tourists, and the summer atmospheric of Italy, with a good dose of drama and tragedy. I also thought this was the funniest Forster I've read so fat, but that's possibly because I identify with some of the Italian stereotypes so much.

Klasicni forsterjevi cudoviti stavki, ampak dobi samo 3 zvezdice ker kaj je to. Kaj je ta plot.

"Romance only dies with life."

I spent some delicious summer hours rereading Forster's first novel, thinking of Europe and its contrasting, yet matching characters, its various climates and cultural reference points. The eternal question of how to cope with social environment and human nature remains unhappily unsolved but beautifully illustrated in front of an Italian artistic landscape backdrop, with a cast of English characters struggling with suppressed emotions.

What is important in life? Sensuality and natural instincts, as Lilia seems to think when engaging with an Italian dentist's handsome but uncultured son, Gino? Sophistication and belief in art as a means to find purpose and satisfaction? Friendship? Passion?

Where angels fear to tread - that is life without the gloss of romance to make it look prettier than it is. Seen in close-up, sexual tension is not glamorous or even particularly exciting, and a mésalliance is a marriage too, just like a conventional one, and it comes with the same issues, once the romance has worn off.

Sacrifice oneself to convention to satisfy other people? Is that the path for angels to tread more securely?

Hardly. What for? To engage in "petty unselfishness", as Forster eloquently sums up a life lived for appearances?

As the sad novel of unfulfilled dreams, unspent passions, unseen art and unlived life comes to a close, I believe I know what to take from it. We can't ever rely on somebody or something else to give us meaning. If we look for purpose and satisfaction in other people, rather than within ourselves, we will always, always be disappointed. For other people don't pursue our happiness, not even when they claim to "love" us. They pursue their own goals, and if we happen to cross their path we may be used as a vehicle on their quest, that's all.

If we want to be brave angels, walking joyously on the path that leads to an interesting and fulfilling future, we have to look for our own meaning.

Where angels like to walk...

Her eyes were open, full of infinite pity and full of majesty, as if they discerned the boundaries of sorrow, and saw unimaginable tracts beyond. Such eyes he had seen in great pictures but never in a mortal. Her hands were folded round the sufferer, stroking him lightly, for even a goddess can do no more than that.

To interfere in the intentions of others; who dictates what is right? That is the central theme of Where Angels Fear to Tread.

Much more melancholic than the sunlit decadence of A Room With a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread is a tragic expedition into the audacity of humanity and its willingness to override the will of others. Both books follow characters that meet a shift in perspective within the history-charged architecture of Italy, but what a delightful, disarming, and twisted change of tone from one book to the other.

Forster makes it clear that life ceases without the presence of passion. Truth, Beauty, or Love; it does not matter unless you give a damn.

There is so much wisdom packed into this short, first novel. Forster's commentary on the misunderstandings and missed opportunities between people of different cultures and religions is still so relevant today. I read this book after seeing the movie and before I set to work on my own remixed version of the whole "stranger in a strange land" experience.

For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours. The passion they have aroused lives after them, easy to transmute or to transfer, but well-nigh impossible to destroy.

I love Forster's writing. So, much so that to celebrate it I got myself a whole new set of lovely, matching editions of his novels recently.

Where Angels Fear to Tread was his first novel (published in 1905), and re-reading it this time I can see how this is very much a first novel, and why it has never impressed me on previous reads. You see, I came to Forster by way of Howards End, his fourth novel (published in 1910), and that reading experience set the bar vary, VERY high for any other book that was to follow, especially any other book by Forster.

This time, I read the book from a much altered perspective on life, but I still found the plot rather stilted and the characters simply unbearable - apart from Miss Abbott. Forster's message - which is quite daring for its time! - gets a little lost in the characters' bickering. Sure, there are some signs of great character study and an underlying satire of English and Italian society, but the characters are also really annoying. A satire is something I want to enjoy reading, the people in this story I just wanted to shove off the train.

There was one scene, however that I absolutely adore:

“You are wonderful!” he said gravely.
“Oh, you appreciate me!” she burst out again. “I wish you didn’t. You appreciate us all—see good in all of us. And all the time you are dead—dead—dead. Look, why aren’t you angry?” She came up to him, and then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands. “You are so splendid, Mr Herriton, that I can’t bear to see you wasted. I can’t bear—she has not been good to you—your mother.”
“Miss Abbott, don’t worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I’m one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia’s marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an ‘honourable failure’. I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don’t suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil. I don’t die—I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m not there. You are quite right: life to me is just a spectacle, which—thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you—is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.”
She said solemnly, “I wish something would happen to you, my dear friend; I wish something would happen to you.”
“But why?” he asked, smiling. “Prove to me why I don’t do as I am.”
She also smiled, very gravely. She could not prove it. No argument existed. Their discourse, splendid as it had been, resulted in nothing, and their respective opinions and policies were exactly the same when they left the church as when they had entered it.

There is an understatement in that scene that makes it lovely, sad, and very critical at the same time. And the fact that it is Miss Abbott, the woman who is expected to fall in line with expectations of her more qualified peers, who is - without having to shout it from the rooftops - the wiser and more worldly of the characters, just puts Forster way ahead of his time. Those aspects I really love about the book, but they just do not come to the fore in Where Angels Fear to Tread.

Instead, we get to meet a lot of fools.

For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or—to put the thing less cynically—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.

A cutting exploration of the prudish, snobbish, self-important ways of a certain English class. It ends on an incredibly depressing note, but the story probes concepts of morality, virtue and the nature of prejudice. You'll enjoy disliking the characters.

This may have the rough edges of a first novel by a young writer, but we're talking about Forster here. First attempt or not, Where Angels Fear to Tread is still damn good. He throws the reader for a loop when (spoilerish bit coming up -->) he kills off his main character midway through the book (<--honestly though, the book's summary on GR spoils that for you already) just as readers are getting up steam for her. That feels like a youthful mistake, but the following resolution is gripping enough to save this solid novel in the end. It may not be his best, but damn, I wish I could write as well as this.

An interesting debut novel. It is the sort of story that never seems serious and even borders on the ridiculous at times but there is something deeper going on the whole time. I was constantly surprised by this story and wrongfooted at the end which shows Forsters strength as a storyteller. He is bold and unconventional and I will definitely be back for more.

(As of August 2014, I am selling a first American edition, first printing of this book through my arts center's rare-book collection [cclapcenter.com/rarebooks]. Here below is the description I wrote for the book's auction page at eBay.)

The early 20th century was a sneakily fascinating time in British literary history, mostly because of the British public really starting to wrestle for the first time with its role in colonialism, class and Empire, as seen in a series of authors at the time who tiptoed and danced around the subject without ever quite stating their opinions in a plain way. Take E.M. Forster for an excellent example, a closeted gay man who was hugely critical of class and race issues in his private life (and who turned down an honorary knighthood once he was old and famous), but who was forced to only subliminally talk about all these subjects through a series of novels that at first glance seem simply like frilly romance stories. This is most clearly seen in such late-period masterpieces as Howards End and A Passage to India, but all the elements are there even in his very first book, 1905's Where Angels Fear to Tread (not published in America until 1920, with a first print run of of only 2,630 copies), written when he was just 26 years old. Ostensibly one of those "European Grand Tour" novels so popular at the time (see for example Forster's American peer Henry James, who literally made an entire career out of such stories), at first glance it seems to be the simple tale of a young middle-class British widow who falls in love with a penniless Italian while on vacation one summer, with her shocked family attempting to take control of the couple's eventual child once the woman dies at an early age herself; but a more careful reading reveals just how much contempt Forster has for the prim, sheltered Herriton family at the center of the story, and by extension his disgust for any person who puts "proper appearances" at a higher priority than personal happiness, a running theme of his entire career that he would express in much more subtle and powerful ways in later books. An extra-valuable book merely from the fact that it was Forster's first, even at its premium price today one is getting a steal (copies in better condition and with the dust jacket intact go for ten times as much), a perfect acquisition for Forster fans and those who professionally collect historically important pieces of Edwardian literature.

Some, but not all writers, can suffer with teething troubles on that first novel, E. M. Forster's 1905 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' is a prime example. It's a valiant effort for a writer in his early days before what would follow, and I can't help but compare this to the delightful novel he wrote only three years later, 'A Room with a View', which pleasantly surprised me as to just how good it was. This, just wasn't in the same league. Our Mr. Forster pretty much corners the literary market on English tourists being overwhelmed by the dream of another country, and what happens when that dream clashes against reality. Here, that clash ain't pretty. What it is, however, is sharp-witted, emotional, and sometimes uncomfortable, about what it means to be a tourist, and what it means to put stock in the dream of another place.

Bon voyage Lilia!, a young unsophisticated widow, is being dropped off at the train station by her in-laws - the domineering Mommy Dearest Mrs. Herriton and her children, Philip and Harriet. They are sending her on a trip to serene Italy with the young but trustworthy Caroline Abbott, to escape the droll life in Sawston, England, and prevent her from making a bad love match up. Yep, we're back in those days of frilly hats, turned up moustaches and fine porcelain skin with not a blemish in sight. Hello, Edwardian-era repression. You do look awfully uncomfortable in that corset my dear.

In Monteriano, Lilia marries the handsome but selfish Italian, Gino Carella but soon finds herself in an unhappy marriage with little personal freedom, and the cultural struggle between England and Italy becomes more heated. The set-up swiftly changes when Lilia's newborn comes into the picture, and the novel turns into what one could describe as an old fashioned custody battle. Philip and his sister Harriet set off to Italy to try and save the child from a poor upbringing. And the pleasant nature than went prior is gone, turning the novel into a more weighty affair. The characters have more gusto, and appear pained with panic, one in particular is forced into drastic measures that will effect the outcome. It doesn't help when Caroline confesses her love for Gino, but there is no walking off into the sunset hand in hand, Forster's horizon is filled with a storm rather than blue skies.

E.M. Forster is a terrific immersive writer, and it doesn't take much to be drawn into his stories. This short novel does contain some gorgeous prose, and it's quick to fall in with his social / political commentary, and the well-rounded dynamic characters are easy to love or hate. Just don't get down on yourself if you end up buying a one-way ticket to Tuscany, cancelling the ticket, buying the ticket again, and then cancelling it again. After all, you're only human. And there's no one that understands fickle, flawed humanity like E.M. Forster. So why not a better rating? - simple, I felt this was more of a writing exercise, where he was wearing trainers and not shiny shoes, the whole novel seemed it was written by a man still trying to figure himself out as a writer. Even the best have to start somewhere, right?. The ending also felt limp, casting a shadow over what when before. The idea's were there for sure, and he would only improve, writing eventually in nice polished shoes.

Worth reading, but lacking certain ingredients that would eventually turn him into one of Britain's finest. By the time my morning coffee and croissant comes around, this isn't likely to be lingering in my mind. Whereas 'A Room with View', which was read some time ago, still floats about occasionally.