Howard's End

Two worlds collide in E.M. Forster's Howard's End: the intellectual, highly theoretical world of the Schlegels and the practical, capitalistic world of the Wilcoxes. The two families meet by chance--in fact the very lively opening of the novel finds Helen Schlegel announcing her engagement to Paul Wilcox only to say it is all over the very next day. Helen's older sister, Margaret, befriends Mrs. Wilcox, and when Mrs. Wilcox dies, she leaves Margaret the family's country estate, Howard's End. Outraged, the men in the family say the last whim of their wife and mother cannot be legally binding, and dismiss the claim.

Sexual politics are definitely at work throughout the novel. The Schlegels' parents died when they were young, so Margaret is used to being the head of the family. She and her sister are both highly independent and extremely well-educated, following a very avant-garde set of writers and artists. Both have their foibles, however. In fact, all of the characters have strong foibles, and only a few are endearing enough to get past them. Helen, especially, has an Emma quality to her. She takes on the cause of Leonard Bast, a clerk she meets by chance at a concert. Meaning well, she works to better his place in life. However, she goes about this mission foolishly and causes much pain in the process.

This was a very readable book--after I reached the midway point, it was hard to put down. Written in 1910, it included a lot of the society and marriage drama of the great nineteenth-century English novels, but the scandals were much more scandalous. Forster perfectly blended the theoretical aspects of the novel--the intellectual versus the practical--with an engaging story. This was the first book I've read by Forster, but I look forward to reading more.

Sea of Poppies

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh was a sweeping, epic, historical novel set in nineteenth century India. It had romance, it had tragedy . . . it had a lot of characters to keep track of. That, plus the heavy use of Indian dialect, sailing terms, and pirate-esque slang made it very hard to get into. The first hundred and fifty pages, especially. After that, the characters' paths started crossing, so it was easier to keep track of who was who and became a more interesting story.

The main action surrounded the Ibis, a former slave ship that is being used to transport people to Mauritius. The many characters we meet in the first couple hundred pages either run the ship or end up as one of its passengers. Deeti, who could be considered the main character, was supposed to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre, but instead escaped with a lover. Puli is a French orphan who falls for the ship's second mate Zachary, an American mixed-race sailor. Amidst the many love triangles and such there is quite a bit of commentary on the strict caste system in play at the time, as well as race politics.

Once I got into it, I thought this was a good read. If you can get past the jargon, it goes pretty quickly. I was about to give up around page 120, but kept going because a friend of mine had recommended it. (See comments to the When You Reach Me post.) She was right, and I would recommend this to others.

Songs for the Missing

My latest gym book, Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan, was an interesting follow up to Every Last One. Both dealt with family tragedies, but here the action got going a lot sooner. In the first ten pages or so, we meet high school senior Kim Larsen. And then, right around the tenth page, she goes missing. The rest of the book follows her parents and younger sister as they search for Kim and eventually have to move on with their own lives even though the mystery of her disappearance remains unsolved.

Where Every Last One was slow at the beginning, Song for the Missing needed about 50 pages or so (out of 287 total) cut out of the middle. A hundred pages of friends and family searching the rural landscape for clues was quite repetitive. But, the book raised some interesting questions about how families deal with a disappearance. What happens when Kim's younger sister goes back to school? What do Kim's parents tell the college she has chosen when the fall semester starts and she's still missing? When can they go back to work after spending all their time searching for their daughter?

This certainly wasn't my favorite book, but I kept reading to see if Kim would ever be found, and I'm glad I did keep reading. It was a really poignant portrait of a family caught in a tragedy and how they return to everyday life even when the case remains unsolved.