Despicable people doing despicable things.

This is my favorite by E.M. Forster. I gave A Room with a View three stars and A Passage to India four, but this is even better than that! A love story that I love, and it is extremely short! I don't usually enjoy short novels. It is a classic worth being called a classic. Forster captures different sorts of people and their respective ways of being. We have Harriet who is logical and straight thinking and Miss Caroline Abbott who wavers but recognizes the value of passion…..as well as its dange...

I've decided to revisit Forster. I've never really had a high opinion of his work, but I feel like that may be my problem, not his. I first read Where Angels Fear to Tread about four years ago and my original review is presented below (god I was so shit at 'reviews' back then why did none of you tell me!?)What I can glean from my second reading of Where Angels Fear to Tread is that I enjoyed it more this time. I recall being quite bored with it the first time around but this time my boredom was

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...

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 Roo...

Called a comedy by some reviewers, I don't see that at all. It is tragic all the way round. There are comic aspects, especially at the beginning and I was as ready to laugh as anyone at the shallow, ignorant British tourist Lilia, falling in love with an Italian who is out of her class and social level. The novel is uneven in its mood and I can tell that it is Forster's first. He attains greatness in his later works, but here glimmers appear.

Written in 1905, this was Forster's first novel. It is a comedy of manners, and does show signs of his great talent. Out of his four best-known novels though, this seems by far the weakest. I personally think it would have worked better as a novella or even a short story; later he did write very good short story collections.The balance of this short novel feels wrong. The early descriptions of upper-class characters enmeshed in their own culture are really rather dull, and would have benefited f...

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 E...

I'm always amused at the distain the haughty English aristocrat feels toward the average Italian and their incomprehensible ways and their attitude toward life. I've noticed it in several works of English literature and, not being English myself, I don't know if it really exists. I hope it is true, I won't have to change my perception of the 19th and early 20th century English. I like them that way, their style, their arrogance, if that's the right word, their belief that their way is the right

32nd book of 2022 E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread has some themes in common with his later work A Room with a View which I reviewed a while back, in that both revolve around the English in Italy. However, unlike A Room with a View this novel is much bleaker and has very little by way of character redemption. As for the story, the novel opens with a wealthy English Widow named Lilia Herriton taking a trip to Italy with her friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott. Upon maki...

I absolutely loved this. E.M. Forster is such a wonderful writer, with such fantastic creation of atmosphere, and just clever subtle characterisation. I love that his plots never go the way you expect them to, that characters never fall in love with the people whom the narrative seems to require them to fall in love with. A really great read - one I would highly recommend.

I can't be objective regarding E. M. Forster. Simply love his novels...

My absolute favorite of the E.M. Forster novels I read. This one blew me away. When I turned the last page, I felt like I'd been catapulted out of the novel's world to find myself surprisingly in my own house with my own children around me. It absolutely sucked me in and had me crying and caring and wondering what would happen to each of the characters.One of my favorite novels of all time.

Sorry guys... I really didn't like this book. Borderline 1.5/2 stars!Honestly, out of the four books I read, this one was the one I found the most disappointing. It was very info-dumpy, most of the characters were very unlikeable and the storyline surrounding the attempt of trying to kidnap a baby from its father after the mother dies in childbirth was one at times, I didn’t feel comfortable reading about. I liked the length and the geographical settings but that was all. My penguin edition howe...

"Fools rush in ..."I guess I'm a fool. I thought E. M. Forster was easy to read, almost too easy sometimes. Delighted with his nearly faultless prose, I read his thin first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), all in one afternoon. Forster tells the story of a young English widow who is seduced by her romantic vision of Italy and Italians and yearns to escape her controlling and snobbish in-laws in England. Her hasty marriage to a member of "Italian nobility" sets her English relations aflu...

"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?

I only realized half way through that E M Forster was 26 when he wrote this which is his first. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have read it, I have a violent prejudice against novelists under 30. It’s too early to start. In other art forms it’s essential to be under 30 – the Beatles were in their mid-20s when they did Sgt Pepper, Brian Wilson was 23 and 24 when he created Pet Sounds and Smile, Picasso was churning out brilliant realist works in his mid-teens, and not to mention Mozart’s unpleasant...

Forster's Howard's End is one of my favorite novels ever, and I have yet to read Room With A View or Passage to India, but this was on my shelf so I picked it up. This is his first novel and it's good, but not great. The settings are the village of Sawston in England and Monteriano in Italy, both fictional. There's the inevitable culture clashes between the staid and proper English characters and the friendly and exuberant Italians. If I had read this one first my love for Forster would not be a...

"Just think of the shock value. Killing off the leading lady halfway through. I mean you are intrigued, are you not, my dear? Come on, admit it." (Hitchcock, 2012)Fine, Lilia isn't truly the leading lady, but initially that seems to be the case. I'll keep it short and sweet by saying that the indifference shown by most of the characters at the end of this book is actually revolting. Maybe that's the point? Suffice it to say, I'd much rather spend a few hundred pages with serial killer Tom Ripley...

Where Angels Fear to Tread, Forster's debut novel, tends to follow a literary trend, the Victorian sensation novel: a woman behaves amorally, creates a scandal (or even more than one), there's a mysterious foreign man (and therefore wicked) and tragedy permeates the whole story. Forster, though, writes this novel to criticise rich English people's manners: their hypocrisy, their prejudices, their cruelty in order to keep up the appearances, their unique care for social positions and their casual...