A Room With A View - E.M. Forester - A Short Summary and Review
A Room With A View - E.M. Forester
A Short Summary and Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
A short summary:
Lucy Honeychurch’s Italian tour is meant to be educational, respectable, and properly supervised. Florence is beautiful, yes—but Lucy is there under the watchful eye of a chaperone and the rigid expectations of Edwardian society. What begins as a “lovely” trip quickly becomes something more unsettling and more alive as Lucy is confronted with art, passion, and people who do not follow the rules she has been taught to obey.
Italy introduces her to the possibility: unfiltered emotion, unplanned encounters, and the question she cannot avoid: what kind of life does she actually want? When Lucy returns to England, the freedom she briefly tasted stands in sharp contrast to drawing rooms, polite engagements, and suffocating propriety.
My favorite quote from the book:
Questions to ponder while reading:
My review:
What would you do with a chaperone shadowing your every move?
What would you do for love?
I am such a romantic sap, and I loved this book.
Forster captures that aching moment between obedience and desire, the point at which a woman realizes that safety and happiness are not always the same thing. Lucy’s struggle feels surprisingly modern: the tension between doing what is expected and choosing what is true.
There’s humor here (often sharp and observant), but also real tenderness. The corsets, the rules, the social rituals—they’re exhausting just to read about. I found myself silently cheering for Lucy every time she pushed back, even just a little.
And yes, I would absolutely curse the day I ended up with a chaperone.
And yes, I am deeply grateful I do not have to wear a corset.
A Room with a View is a gentle rebellion wrapped in lace and manners, a reminder that, when it is real, love asks something of us. Sometimes it asks for everything.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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