I loved it. The way Lucy Honeychurch grows as a character and matures into an admirable young woman is splendidly written and I just really like it. It makes me feel good. The movie is gorgeous, too, and has a fantastic cast (except Julian Sand, who seems to be auditioning for the part instead of actually playing it).

i evidently read this book years ago but had no memory of it so i picked it up again after a quick stop in italy earlier last year. (i then put it down for several months..)
upon reflection, it's a book of dichotomies, appropriately told in two parts - italy and england, passion and reason (embodied in the contrast between michelangelo and leonardo), embracing new ideas and being stuck in an arbitrary past. i do wish lucy had been slightly more developed as a character and that the initial connection between her and george had been a little more substantive. but i guess with forster's work there are often small gestures or events that stand in for larger ideas. if i could i'd give it an extra 0.5, if only for some lovely lines describing the english and italian countryside.
[also, if you haven't watched the merchant ivory film version it's a very faithful adaptation with a phenomenal cast.]

I had seen the Merchant Ivory film & only read this because it was the only reasonable looking fiction on a very limited book-exchange shelf. Lucky me!

This original story has a different plot from the film, giving Lucy Honeybourne far more intelligence as she grows up being exposed to people outside her restricted world. The characters so well drawn, with all their foibles. I understand, now, the desire of the well-educated middle-aged, middle class to instruct the young in this sort of "great literature" - but it would have been futile to impose it on me in my youth!! I simply would not have understood.

No Howards End, but still a worthwhile romp through Italy via the Weald (lol).

A Room With A View speaks to the very English experience of going abroad that is as relevant today as it was in 1908. Lucy turns up in Florence only to find the hotel is full of English people and run by a cockney expat. She is stuck with her cousin, who she doesn't really want to be with, but every good package holiday needs a tag-along to make up the numbers. The hotel smells and the rooms aren't as they were advertised on ThomasCook.

You travel half way round the world, only to be sat at dinner with some old duffer who shops at the same Aldi that you do (The Weald!? Do you know Mrs so-and-so? Oh yes, she rents a field off us! What a small world and all that).

The book evokes the singular (...and entirely one-sided) Anglo relationship with Italy. It hits all the (cliched, but irresistible in a RyanAir-summer-seat-sale kind of way) notes that the English espouse about the mysterious, primal spirt of Italy and its ability to uplift dour English sensibilities. #EatPrayLove The drawing of the English to its shore with promises of high culture, art and history, which fall away to a fascination with the goings-on in the piazza and Italianate way of being. “Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.”

The pretentiousness of those haggard old expats who claim to be alone in truly understanding the place, "They walk through my Italy like a pair of cows" and who belittle the Baedecker-reading, guidebook toting tourists clogging up the churches, franctially looking for the Fresco Ruskin recommends that they be impressed by.

My interest started to waver a little after the violets episode. I thought we might be in a for a classic run-of-the-mill repressed romance story, but it did deliver more than this. The anxiety and inner conflict (Forster's 'muddles') of Lucy is handled well and some of Forster's championing of equality between the sexes feels pretty woke. The ending itself though is fairly conventional.

I was a big fan of the side-characters, who really shine. The elder Mr Emerson doesn't give a toss what you think and will speak truth to power, the good-hearted Mr Beebe, the hilarious antics of Mrs Lavish, and last but certainly least, my favourite old maid/martyr, Charlotte.

Wouldn't describe A Room With A View as particularly hard hitting, but defo worth a read if you're a fan of Forster's 'muddles'.

Some of my fave cringey (but still good) quotes:

'“Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along."

"...the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the great unknown."

I did not enjoy the start of the book, in Italy. I enjoyed the rest.

A tentative four, because I think my lack of engagement in parts was due to a reading slump rather than the quality of the book. One to reread at some point.

Brilliant, flawless.. except, sometimes I felt that maybe it was too witty? Or more accurately, MY 1980s comprehensive education wasn't quite up to the job? I was glad that I had seen the film - A LOT.
like for instance: at one point George leaves "a note of interrogation" (WTF?) its a question mark!