Warning: there will be gushing in this review, and lots of it.

“Where have you been all my life?” is the question that keeps running through my head the more I read by and about Forster. I loved “Arctic Summer”, and Wendy Moffat’s biography about him is fascinating so far. I also really enjoyed “Maurice” when I read it in January, but I absolutely will have to re-read it now that I know more about Forster.

I picked “A Room with a View” because I wanted to read one of his earlier novels first. The thing is, I knew “about” it, in the sense that it existed and that it was a classic of modern English literature. And while I had now idea what it was about, I was surprised that it was about this English girl traveling to Italy who ends up in some kind of love triangle. And that it was as funny as it was. I laughed out loud several times, which is rare. But he somehow manages not to be mean while still being sharp. Add to that his observations about men and women that were startingly modern (sadly, more modern than what we find in some books today) and about life itself, some of which I found really profound. I loved every sentence in this book.

But even more than all that - there is something in his writing that strikes a chord in me, that just resonates. When I read in Wendy Moffat’s biography that his “aesthetic enterprise in a single subject [was]: the search of each person for an honest connection with a human being.”, I thought, right, that’s why I love his writing so much. So yeah. E.M. Forster is my discovery of the year.

Edit: I re-read this in preparation for my book club and if anything I like it even better now. It's a book that absolutely stands up to close scrutiny and re-reading and it is SO funny. I mean, sure, sense of humour is something extremely subjective, but Forster's is brilliant imho. So there.