Forster Books

Most people are familiar with the 1994 movie by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, 'Heavenly Creatures' which stared Kate Winslet (of 'Titanic' fame) and Melanie Lynskey. 'Daughters of Heaven' is the play that the film was based on. On June 22 1954, on a secluded track in Christchurch's Victoria Park, Juliet Marion Hulme and Pauline Yvonne Parker bludgeoned Pauline's mother to death with a brick in a stocking. They were 15 and 16 years old. The play takes place, mostly, in the courtroom, with flashbacks of the events leading up to the murder of Honora Parker, to outline the evidence of the 'Killing of Mrs. Parker' to the audience (the court). It is both a story of a severly English-influenced New Zealand city being turned upside down by a cold blooded murder at the hands of two schoolgirls, and a story about love - the sweeping away of reason and morality in a crazy devotion. Juliet Hulme says, "We had the right to do what we needed to do in the interests of our own happiness". The play, in my opinion, is far more superior to the movie. The script is moving and repelling all at once, because as it seems like fiction, it is not. Most of the things said in the play are exactly as they were said in 1954. All of Pauline's diary entries are factual, as are the things said in court, in prision, even down to the way the girls, the families and the court acted. If you liked the movie version, then get your hands on this play. It is not to be missed.

This is a novel written in the form of an edited diary. It is a convincing, beautifully written account of the life of an ordinary Englishwoman from 1914 until 1995. You gradually build up a picture of Millicent's life in the diary which Forster writes with great clarity. It covers all majors events from the Great War onwards and it is a triumphant depiction of an independent 20th century woman, warts and all. I started this after reading Margaret Forster's biography of her grandmother and mother and I am full of admiration for her clear uncluttered style of writing and intend to read all the rest of her books now.

E.M. Forster appeals to many because of his early novels, "Where Angels Fear to Tread", "A Room with a View", and "Howard's End", the last which is included in this book. They seem like updated Austen novels, neat and well-structured, albeit more surprising, but still in all appearances novels dealing with social manners. However, "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India" deal with much more substantial themes of industrialization and imperialism as well as Forster's overarching idea of connection between peoples and ideologies.

"Howard's End" sets up the opposition between the cultured Schlegels and the industrious Wilcoxes. Simplistically, each family represents the division within society at the time, whether to embrace the outward form of change in motor cars and encroaching tenements or to hold onto the land and the responsibility and feelings contained within it. Forster also makes use of associations and symbols to further the reader's understanding of a greater meaning, such as the teutonic assocation with the Schlegels or the description of Mrs. Bast's photograph to suggest her occupation. Still, the theme of connection found in its famous epigraph "Only connect... (the prose to the passion)" is woven well throughout and sometimes surprisingly so.

"A Passage..." is Forster's greatest work, and rightfully so because in it he is most ambitious, adding elements of imperialism and religion to that of relationships between people. While the novel is not a political novel per se, it justifies the interpretation through its mostly sympathetic treatment of the Indians and the absurdity of British bureacracy in a culture beyond its understanding. I assert that this is one of Forster's more pessimistic novels with an appropriate ending, but my colleagues assert the opposite, that it makes claims to the hope of connection. I leave it to you to conclude for yourself. Forster also gives a good foretaste of the post-modernist technique, with his attempt to show that the "many-headed monster" of India or any culture cannot be adequately treated by a single perspective.

If you want a really nice edition that is easy to read (pages lie flat,book not too heavy,and my copy is without blemish) this is it.

Although this book is now a little out of date (it was published in 1993), it nevertheless is an authoritative, detailed and well written account of the biggest modern story of tea. As the the Foreword to the book says " China's tea is a big story. Tea played a large role in the nineteenth-century opening up of China to Western imperialism. It changed world wide consumer habits and social patterns. It contributed a significant proportion of exports and agricultural output over long periods in mainland China and Taiwan. It remains a significant element in the rural economy of many Chinese provinces, and remains important in Chinese consumption patterns as incomes rise in the process of economic growth." This book is, so far as I am aware the most comprehensive account in the English language of the modern China tea industry. Although it contains a wealth of facts and figures, it is written in a lively and engaging style, which makes it a pleasure to read.

This is a good monography of the L.A. based architectural firm hodgetts and Fung. Most of their work in the book has a connection with the film industry.

The book addresses the earlier work of the firm. It does a good job in providing an insight of the firm's style and approach to design.

This musical is laugh-out-loud funny! This play was perfect!

Strangely the books has been wrongly called on Amazon "How to Live Your Dreams" although the book is actually called "How to Make Your Dreams Come True". This book and Mark Forster's other book "Get Everything Done and Still Have Time To Play" is great. A short and very useful read - the concepts are easy to grasp and the book won't take long to get through so you can rapidly get on with applying the practical methods to your own life. There is an easy to follow plan that summarises the steps and exercises to go through to learn and consolidate the methods shown in the book. He uses the unusual method of dialoguing with his imagined future self who coaches him to become the person he wants to be, working towards a personal vision so you can actually "see" the methods being demonstrated as you read the book. I found this fascinating as the process unfolded. Coupled with this he suggests really easy and quick methods of getting stuff done, goal setting and feeling better and more positive about your life and the goals you want to achieve. Mark is cool, because he is so down to earth and doesn't pretend to be perfect. I can see why he has recently been nominated one of the top 10 coaches in the UK by the Independent on Sunday newspaper. The book is written with honesty, humour and is very, very practical. Most of all the methods really work. I highly recommend this book.

In this 1910 story of Edwardian England, Forster illustrates the conflicts between the superior attitudes of the aristocracy and a developing feeling of obligation toward the "lower" classes which World War I will soon bring into sharp relief. Margaret and Helen Schlegel are intellectual and sensitive to the arts, with compassionate hearts for those less fortunate. When Margaret, at age twenty-nine, is affianced to Henry Wilcox, the much older, widowed husband of a friend, this conflict of attitudes is brought to the fore. Henry, insensitive and believing himself actually entitled to his family's privileges, is cold and reserved, though Margaret believes that "Henry must be forgiven and made better by love."

Helen, her sister, a 21-year-old with an enthusiasm for the life of the imagination, has no sympathy for Henry's staid pronouncements and failure to pay attention to the people "below him" who are dependent upon his whims. When Henry asserts that Porphyria Fire Insurance Co. is on the verge of collapse, Helen and Margaret persuade Leonard Bast, a young clerk they have befriended, to resign his position there, only to have him later "downsized" out of his subsequent bank job. Henry refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever and refuses his wife's entreaties to give the destitute Leonard a job.

Immensely sympathetic to the economic position of the poor and women, Forster illustrates their financial dependence on those over whom they have little control. Margaret, who secures the reader's total sympathy, must try to educate a close-minded dolt like Henry to be kinder and more empathetic towards the people he considers below him, but she achieves only limited success. When Helen returns from Germany, where she has been living, and Henry and his family discover she is pregnant, Henry's belief that her condition reflects negatively upon himself and his family inspires a disaster with far-reaching consequences.

Filled with incisive observations and great wit, the novel follows the narrative pattern of a melodrama, but Forster's sensitivity to both sides--the practical and conservative values of Henry vs. the emotional and idealistic sides of Margaret and Helen--elevates the novel above the tawdry. Henry is a product of his time and his class, but though times are changing, he is too dense to realize it. With the action centered around the Wilcox home at Howard's End, the reader realizes that the estate is a microcosm of the country and that its conflicts are those of the nation. Thoughtful and entertaining, Howard's End still draws in readers after almost a hundred years. Mary Whipple

Most of us connect the notion of "home" or "childhood home" with one particular place, that innocent paradise we have since had to give up and keep searching for forever after. In Ruth Wilcox's world, Howards End is that place; the countryside house where she was born, where her family often returns to spend their vacations, and which, everyone assumes, will pass on to her children when she is dead.

But will it really? Unbeknownst to Ruth's family, the issue is put into question when Ruth forms a friendship with her neighbor-to-be Margaret Schlegel, like Ruth herself from a middle class background but nevertheless separated from Ruth's world by several layers of society and politics: That of the Wilcox is epitomized by pater familias/businessman Henry - rich, conservative and without any sympathy whatsoever for those less fortunate than themselves ("It's all part of the battle of life ... The poor are poor; one is sorry for them, but there it is," Henry Wilcox once comments); while the Schlegels, on the other hand, have just enough income to lead a comfortable life, were brought up by their Aunt Juley, support suffrage (women's right to vote) and surround themselves with actors, "blue-stockings" (feminists), intellectuals and other members of the avantgarde. Further complexity is added when Margaret's sister Helen brings to the Schlegel home Leonard Bast, a poor but idealistic young clerk who loves music, literature and astronomy - and with him, his working class wife Jacky, the embarrassment of having to interact with her, and the even more embarrassing revelation which she has in store for Henry Wilcox; eventually leaving her disillusioned husband to comment that "books aren't real," and that in fact they and music "are for the rich so they don't feel bad after dinner."

An allegory on the question who will ultimately inherit England - the likes of the Wilcox, the Schlegels, or the Basts - E.M. Forster's novel is one of the early 20th century's finest pieces of literature; a masterpiece of social study and character study alike, in which the author brings his protagonists and their environment to life with empathy and a fine eye for detail. The story's strongest character is undoubtedly Margaret Schlegel, a young woman "filled with ... a profound vivacity, a continual and sincere response to all that she encounter[s] in her path through life," as Forster describes her, and whose friendship with Ruth Wilcox, even at the beginning, already brings the two families back together again after Helen has endangered their as-yet tentaive acquaintance by engaging in a near-scandalous affair with Ruth's younger son Paul.

Ultimately, Margaret and Ruth become so close that Ruth eventually decides to give Meg "something worth [her] friendship" - none other than Howards End, a wish that has her panicking family scramble most ungentlemanly for every reason in the book to invalidate the codicil setting forth that bestowal, from its lacking date and signature to the testatrix's state of mind, the ambiguity of the writing's content, the question why Meg should want the house in the first place since she already has one, and the fact that the writing is only in pencil, which "never counts," as Dolly, wife of the Wilcox' elder son Charles is quick to point out, only to be reprimanded by her father in law "from out of his fortress" (Forster) not to "interfere with what you do not understand." And so it is that Meg will only see the house (and be instantly mistaken for Ruth because she has "her way of walking around the house," as the housekeeper explains) when she and her siblings have to look for a new home and Henry Wilcox, who has started to court her after Ruth's death, suggests that the Schlegel's furniture be temporarily stored there - a fateful decision. And while Meg and Henry slowly and painfully learn to adjust to each other, the complexity of their families' relations, and their interactions with the Basts, finally come crashing down on them in a dramatic conclusion.

Also recommended:
Great Novels and Short Stories of E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster: A Life (A Harvest Book)
Howards End - The Merchant Ivory Collection
A Room with a View (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Brideshead Revisited
The W. Somerset Maugham Reader: Novels, Stories, Travel Writing