A Passage to India (1924)

I also finished the classic, A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster. I enjoyed 2 of his other books - A Room with a View and Howard's End. Both of those other books seem to poke fun at English Edwardian society in a light and humorous way. This book had a much more serious tone. It takes place in India where an young Indian man, Dr. Aziz, is accused of molesting a young English woman. Forster's criticism of British colonialism is much harsher than the other novels. Excellent story! It was interesting to listen and compare this book with The Help - two different time periods and places with the same underlying issue of racism. This book is narrated by Frederick Davidson, who for some reason I dislike. He is definitely talented at accents and voices, but I find his normal voice to be very 'British' and stuffy. But, for this book, where many of the characters were British and stuffy, it ended up being a good match. Definitely a classic worth listening to!
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“Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.”
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

The plot to this book is really a quite slender one in that a British woman Adela Quested travels to India with her prospective mother-in-law to see if she is willing to marry the British magistrate and eventually settle there. Once in India however Adela is appalled by the Anglo-Indians with their narrow minded views, and in particular the Anglo-Indian wives with whom she will have to spend time with if she marries there. Adela decides that she wishes to see India and accepts an invitation to visit the local Marabar caves with an Indian doctor. There she is attacked and unjustly accuses the Doctor of being the assailant.

However despite the thin thread of plot what Forster does wonderfully is weave around it beautifully and detailed descriptions of the local surroundings, weather, caste and religious differences etc so that it becomes rather like those Russian dolls where one is stacked inside another turning a thin thread of cotton into a thick berthing hawser.

The book is a pretty savage critique of Empire rule with its whites only Club and petty governance over the local population trying to squeeze all of India with all its varying religious sects, castes etc into a simple box.All the more impressive because Forster tells from first hand experience.But what the author really asks is whether or not people from different nationalities, religion and background can ever really truly become friends or would there always be an invisible barrier between them?

This would have been seen as pretty revolutioary when it was first written in 1924 and many people today probably feel that the central message is obsolete, after all we know from History about the problems that Empire rule caused all over the world and we have all heard the term Multi-Culturism bandied about by politicians and News organisations. IMHO most of those people are missing the point and that the central message is still relevant today. The only difference being that it is more about people of differing nationalities settling in Britain rather than the British settling abroad.

For me this was a very enjoyable and thought provoking read and I look forward to reading some of Forster's other works. ( )

I'm not wildly enthusiastic about this book. It gives you an interesting view of India as a British colony, and some of the descriptions are lovely, but overall I found it quite dry and hard to read in anything but little chunks. The story itself isn't wildly inventive, of course: it reminded me a lot, at least around the middle, of To Kill A Mockingbird: a native is wrongly accused of assaulting a woman, the woman's part is taken by all, etc. It's not a new story -- of course not, since it could easily have happened (and for all I know, probably did). The characters didn't feel real to me, really, and Miss Quested's little outbursts after the "attack" made me raise an eyebrow. ( )

This was the first book I was able to finish for my English class. While parts were confusing and it was not the most "action-packed" book, I enjoyed reading it to a pretty high extent. The language is very nice and the way Forster described some parts was utterly comical. I wish I didn't have to rush through the book but at least I got to finish it. ( )

I bought this one out of desperation because "A Thousand Splendid Suns" was lasting way less than it was supposed to. (Note to self: do not travel without my ebook. ever. again.)

Now I need to figure out where to fit this into the challenge or it's going to bug me so much I'm going to end up hating it. Not the mindset you want to be in when diving into a new book right? #neurotic #endwhine