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A Room with a View (Bantam Classics)
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Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
Author: E.M. Forster
Publisher: Bantam Classics
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Our Price: $5.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
Author: E.M. Forster
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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A Room with a View (Bantam Classics) Description
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780553213232
ISBN: 0553213237
Label: Bantam Classics
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1988-08-01
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Product Release Date: 1988-07-01
Studio: Bantam Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780553213232
ISBN: 0553213237
Label: Bantam Classics
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1988-08-01
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Product Release Date: 1988-07-01
Studio: Bantam Classics
Editorial Review of A Room with a View (Bantam Classics)
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England.
A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.
The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster’s colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E. M. Forster’s earliest and most celebrated works.
A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.
The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster’s colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E. M. Forster’s earliest and most celebrated works.
Customer Reviews of A Room with a View (Bantam Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Make room in your heart for Forster's delightfully frothy "A Room With a View"
Review: Edward Morgan Foster (1879-1970) lived a long life as a Cambridge don and world traveler. However, most of this author's fiction was completed in the first 20 years of the 20th century. "A Room With a View" is a gently satirical view of the English abroad and at home in the late Edwardian Age. Perhaps we can view England as the cozy room of normality and routine while the sunny Italian landscape provides us a view of a wider world outside our usual gaze.
The short novel is divided into two parts. In part one we are introduced to a group of English travelers in Italy. We meet Charlotte
an old maid aunt who is chaperoning the upper middle class young lady the fetching Lucy Honeychurch. (Charlotte reminds one of the governess types described with right on accuracy by Charlotte Bronte). The women want a good view of Florence so reluctantly switch rooms with Mr. Emerson (a dreamy transcendentalist like older man who reminds us of the philisophical musings of Concord sage Ralph Waldo Emerson) and his stra handsome son George. (George is to become a knight saving Lucy from the clutches of the effete snob aesthete Cyril Vise). On a sightseeing picnic Lucy and George kiss and then depart. Lucy goes to Rome meeting her future fiance the artistic and bookish Cyril.
Part II is set in England. After several complications the course of true love is finally set on its right course. Lucy jilts Cyril and finds true bliss with George. The novel is cyclicalbeginning in spring and ending with Lucy Honeychurch's honeymoon with George. This occurs in the same Florentine hotel in which they met. A year has passed and it is spring again for these young lovers.
Forster provides a gallery of colorful characters: Mr Beebe the clergyman who hopes Lucy dumps Cyril for George; Eleanor Lavish a comically drawn mystery writer; Lucy's brother Fred and a Cockney hotel owner in Florence.
Forster wishes to open the stuffy door of Victorian fiction with a new frankness on sexuality and freedom of expression. His scene in which the major male characters bathe in a pond is an example of this theme. Forster favors physical and intimate love to the aesthetic passionless p love which Vise has for Lucy. George is athletic and earthy while Vise is a nerdy bookworm. Forster's book is good in the use of witty dialogue. His understanding of the British class system leads him to satirical comments on its rigidity.
A quibble. The characters don't have much depth seeming to be actors in a stage presentation. Forster is worth reading for his advocacy of true love and emotion in a society of elaborate and often hypocritcal rules. He is a good author worthy of your time.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Modern school readers, STICK WITH IT!
Review: We are spoiled by modern fiction. As great as the writing is, it is more straightforward and literal. Do you ever find yourself starting a classic and not finishing it??? You weren't getting into it immediately and lost interest. It can be the same with old movies. We watch through different eyes than the time when it was written or produced. My book club did this book this month. We all struggled. I chose this one because I wanted us to try a classic, but I wanted it to be short and pleasant. The "flow" started later, and it was more laboured to get there.It is so worth it to keep with it. It is not that we are not capable of understanding the language. We are so used to graphic, and explicit, and straightforward language. We need to train our brains, and it can take up to half the book to get to the point where you are really drawn in, forgetting to concentrate and just enjoying the ride.This is truly a lovely story. I love Florence. It is a timeless city that infects you body and soul. So will this book if you let it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Lovely Classic
Review: E.M. Forster does a remarkable job of illustrating the constricting social values of Edwardian England with humor and acute insight. Our heroine must decide: go along and get along or shirk her "dutites" and chose a life of remarkable rebellion (for the time).
You'll want your own trip to Italy when you're through reading! One of my absolute favorites.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Love vs. Books
Review: This is the first E.M. Forester book I've read and it affected me greatly. When I write 'reviews', I don't mean to give a traditional book review, but to note how the book affected my real life.
This is how: One of the characters, Cecil, is a bit of a snob and looks down on the common homey interests of his betrothed's family. He is good with books,art, ideas and 'things', but when he interacts with real people, his personality 'kills' any chance of having an intimate relationship and thus, his life is one of ideas rather than people.
How fiction unwraps itself and reveals itself to be true! This was looking into a mirror for me. What my friends won't tell me, a good novel will! Doing well with "books, ideas and things" is not the epicenter of living, says Forester, but the nitty gritty give and take of affectionate living is where life's eruption takes place. Art and ideas and books, although glorious, arise from this center, not vice versa. First comes the flesh, then the idea.
Thus this 'old' book, written over 100 years ago, performs the magic of all good literature: it makes me act and think differently. I now, attempt to(!), treat the person who stands before me, not as an idea, but as another real, carbon-based life form!
"A Room With A View" tells the often told story of a young person learning to stand in her own place rather than where society demands she stand, yet Forester's characters are so complete that this old story is like a skeleton that is dressed up in finery and begins to walk! I fell in love with the characters and recognized myself in all of them; yes, even in the old biddy Charlotte, who, as it turns out, wasn't so old fashioned and possibly was the master puppeteer.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A must-read --- captivating!
Review: "A Room with a View" is a novel that is thoroughly enjoyable from the first page to the last. It's a heart-warming love story, and this aspect of it completely charmed me. It's also very funny in some places. It's not overlong, either, so it doesn't drag, and it's a very easy read. I simply fell in love with "A Room with a View", and it has to be one of my favorite books I've ever read. I'd recommend it to anybody.
Review Summary: Make room in your heart for Forster's delightfully frothy "A Room With a View"
Review: Edward Morgan Foster (1879-1970) lived a long life as a Cambridge don and world traveler. However, most of this author's fiction was completed in the first 20 years of the 20th century. "A Room With a View" is a gently satirical view of the English abroad and at home in the late Edwardian Age. Perhaps we can view England as the cozy room of normality and routine while the sunny Italian landscape provides us a view of a wider world outside our usual gaze.
The short novel is divided into two parts. In part one we are introduced to a group of English travelers in Italy. We meet Charlotte
an old maid aunt who is chaperoning the upper middle class young lady the fetching Lucy Honeychurch. (Charlotte reminds one of the governess types described with right on accuracy by Charlotte Bronte). The women want a good view of Florence so reluctantly switch rooms with Mr. Emerson (a dreamy transcendentalist like older man who reminds us of the philisophical musings of Concord sage Ralph Waldo Emerson) and his stra handsome son George. (George is to become a knight saving Lucy from the clutches of the effete snob aesthete Cyril Vise). On a sightseeing picnic Lucy and George kiss and then depart. Lucy goes to Rome meeting her future fiance the artistic and bookish Cyril.
Part II is set in England. After several complications the course of true love is finally set on its right course. Lucy jilts Cyril and finds true bliss with George. The novel is cyclicalbeginning in spring and ending with Lucy Honeychurch's honeymoon with George. This occurs in the same Florentine hotel in which they met. A year has passed and it is spring again for these young lovers.
Forster provides a gallery of colorful characters: Mr Beebe the clergyman who hopes Lucy dumps Cyril for George; Eleanor Lavish a comically drawn mystery writer; Lucy's brother Fred and a Cockney hotel owner in Florence.
Forster wishes to open the stuffy door of Victorian fiction with a new frankness on sexuality and freedom of expression. His scene in which the major male characters bathe in a pond is an example of this theme. Forster favors physical and intimate love to the aesthetic passionless p love which Vise has for Lucy. George is athletic and earthy while Vise is a nerdy bookworm. Forster's book is good in the use of witty dialogue. His understanding of the British class system leads him to satirical comments on its rigidity.
A quibble. The characters don't have much depth seeming to be actors in a stage presentation. Forster is worth reading for his advocacy of true love and emotion in a society of elaborate and often hypocritcal rules. He is a good author worthy of your time.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Modern school readers, STICK WITH IT!
Review: We are spoiled by modern fiction. As great as the writing is, it is more straightforward and literal. Do you ever find yourself starting a classic and not finishing it??? You weren't getting into it immediately and lost interest. It can be the same with old movies. We watch through different eyes than the time when it was written or produced. My book club did this book this month. We all struggled. I chose this one because I wanted us to try a classic, but I wanted it to be short and pleasant. The "flow" started later, and it was more laboured to get there.It is so worth it to keep with it. It is not that we are not capable of understanding the language. We are so used to graphic, and explicit, and straightforward language. We need to train our brains, and it can take up to half the book to get to the point where you are really drawn in, forgetting to concentrate and just enjoying the ride.This is truly a lovely story. I love Florence. It is a timeless city that infects you body and soul. So will this book if you let it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Lovely Classic
Review: E.M. Forster does a remarkable job of illustrating the constricting social values of Edwardian England with humor and acute insight. Our heroine must decide: go along and get along or shirk her "dutites" and chose a life of remarkable rebellion (for the time).
You'll want your own trip to Italy when you're through reading! One of my absolute favorites.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Love vs. Books
Review: This is the first E.M. Forester book I've read and it affected me greatly. When I write 'reviews', I don't mean to give a traditional book review, but to note how the book affected my real life.
This is how: One of the characters, Cecil, is a bit of a snob and looks down on the common homey interests of his betrothed's family. He is good with books,art, ideas and 'things', but when he interacts with real people, his personality 'kills' any chance of having an intimate relationship and thus, his life is one of ideas rather than people.
How fiction unwraps itself and reveals itself to be true! This was looking into a mirror for me. What my friends won't tell me, a good novel will! Doing well with "books, ideas and things" is not the epicenter of living, says Forester, but the nitty gritty give and take of affectionate living is where life's eruption takes place. Art and ideas and books, although glorious, arise from this center, not vice versa. First comes the flesh, then the idea.
Thus this 'old' book, written over 100 years ago, performs the magic of all good literature: it makes me act and think differently. I now, attempt to(!), treat the person who stands before me, not as an idea, but as another real, carbon-based life form!
"A Room With A View" tells the often told story of a young person learning to stand in her own place rather than where society demands she stand, yet Forester's characters are so complete that this old story is like a skeleton that is dressed up in finery and begins to walk! I fell in love with the characters and recognized myself in all of them; yes, even in the old biddy Charlotte, who, as it turns out, wasn't so old fashioned and possibly was the master puppeteer.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A must-read --- captivating!
Review: "A Room with a View" is a novel that is thoroughly enjoyable from the first page to the last. It's a heart-warming love story, and this aspect of it completely charmed me. It's also very funny in some places. It's not overlong, either, so it doesn't drag, and it's a very easy read. I simply fell in love with "A Room with a View", and it has to be one of my favorite books I've ever read. I'd recommend it to anybody.