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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poignant, perceptive and memorable love story., 11 July 2010
Maurice is not among the pioneering works of gay literature in that, though written before World War I, it was only published in 1970, after Forster's death, so it did not carve out a new territory of freedom for gay men. Forster himself said that the book was, by the close of his life, dated. And so it is in that it portrays a society that is long gone. But the emotional torment of Maurice as he struggles, in real pain, with his sexuality still strikes a chord, as does the brilliant portrayal of Maurice's inner conviction that everything that is wrong with him is also everything that is right for him as well.
Forster's prose is taut and understated, full of striking images and strong on irony. He also, perceptively for the time when he was writing, portrays a society on the verge of being swept away. Penge, the grand but delapidated country house of Maurice's friend Clive, is a symbol of a crumbling class system. The uneasy relationship between Maurice and Alec Scudder, when they are in the position of master and servant, rather than equals as lovers, perfectly describes the ambiguity and injustice of a deeply unfair social order. Maurice remains a remarkable book in its own right, as well as a poignant insight into the inner turmoil of Forster's own life in an age when to be gay was a crime and a sickness. The love between Alec and Maurice can only be consummated in secret. Society is governed by hypocrisy. This is a fascinating and moving glimpse of a world which, praise be, has gone forever.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Piece of Literature, 11 Jan 2008
"Maurice" by E.M. Forster is one of my favourite novels. It is so simply and beautifully written and tells a story that all readers will able to relate to in one way or another. A tragic reflection of Forster's own life of closeted homosexuality - the novel itself was written in 1914 when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and remained unpublished until 1970 - the novel tells the story of Maurice Hall, a young man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Edwardian England where his "sort" are arrested for such "crimes". However, when he meets Clive, a fellow student at Cambridge, he realises that he is not alone in his predicament after all. As the events of the story unfold, things become deeply sad as Maurice suffers more and more because of a secret that he feels he cannot tell any of his family and friends. The heartwarming ending - which Forster must have hoped for himself as well - is ultimately uplifting and allows the reader to envisage what the future will be like for Maurice themselves.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Edition of a Great Novel, 21 July 2009
E M Forster's "Maurice" is a classic of the gay novel but regardless of being a classic it still remains an interesting and engaging work of literature. However, we had to wait almost thirty years for a critical edition but the book seems to have been destined for delays from the moment it was conceived. Although the writer completed the first draft in just a few months by 1913, it took him another 46 years of correcting and amending the text before he decided to leave it alone for another decade in a folder marked "Publishable, but is it worth it?". The novel appeared for the first time in 1971, a year after its author's death. Rather in a hurry to get the last unknown Forster's novel, the editors apparently did not pay sufficient attention to variants of the text. Still the edition remained in print for another twenty-eight years before this corrected edition finally appeared on the market.
An average reader may find this volume a bit too much to handle - over fifty pages of detailed introduction and almost a hundred pages of textual notes. Still the text of the novel is worth the money (just as the introduction) even if the extended notes (the editors apparently decided against publishing a separate volume of "Manuscripts" as they did in case of "A Passage to India" and two other novels) are addressed only to few specialists.
A perfect gift for anybody interested in history of gay literature or Forster. Even if they already have a copy of "Maurice" this is so much more than another reprint they will be happy to have it.
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