Nouse.co.uk » Sarah Stretton http://www.nouse.co.uk Award-winning University of York Student Newspaper and Website Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:00:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A Room With A View, E.M. Forster http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/03/06/a-room-with-a-view-em-forster/ http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/03/06/a-room-with-a-view-em-forster/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:41:40 +0000 Sarah Stretton http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/03/06/a-room-with-a-view-em-forster/ [rating: 4]

Publisher: Penguin
Price: £7.99

A Room with a View, described by Forster as his happiest novel, is set around the vibrant and energetic city of Florence and so achieves this through its environment alone.

It charts the emancipation of Lucy Honeychurch, a repressed yet curious product of the 19th-century upper-middle class. The book depicts Lucy’s struggles to grow from indecision to fulfillment. Through the visual landscape and culture of Italy, Forster attempts to remove the shackles of ‘Englishness’ and suggest the possibilities of individual exploration and experience.

Lucy’s journey is encouraged by George Emerson, part of the social periphery, who represents freedom. Their relationship reflects the struggle between Victorian values and a new liberal outlook. George acts as a disarming influence on Lucy, encouraging her to break free from her enclosed world.

Yet Forster creates barriers to this in Lucy’s elderly spinster cousin and her fiancé, a consistent source of irritation and frustration to the unexpressed love of George and Lucy. This novel incorporates many of the characteristics of modern popular novels in its themes of love, struggle and self-expression.

]]> http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/03/06/a-room-with-a-view-em-forster/feed/ 0 The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/02/13/the-remains-of-the-day-kazuo-ishiguro/ http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/02/13/the-remains-of-the-day-kazuo-ishiguro/#comments Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:35:58 +0000 Sarah Stretton http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/02/13/the-remains-of-the-day-kazuo-ishiguro/ [rating: 4]

This is a novel that both frustrates and compels. In his most celebrated work, Ishiguro presents us with a beautiful and intense portrayal of an ageing butler, Stevens.

The novel is set across six days in which Stevens undertakes a journey to discover himself and the consequence of past decisions. His journey is motivated by his repressed feelings for Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper, as we slowly learn through successive episodes of nostalgia. Stevens is a ghost of a lost profession and generation, and it is through his narration that we are forced to reconsider our ideas of the meaning of dignity, love and life.

One of the most dexterous achievements of this novel is Ishiguro’s success in revealing Stevens’s character to everyone save the narrator himself. The pace of the novel, like the protagonist’s character, has the potential to frustrate. But this appears to be Ishiguro’s intention, contributing to the ingenious construction and structure of the novel. Despite being difficult to get into, it is fundamentally a simple story delivered with seamless eloquence, and as such, well deserves perseverance.

publisher: faber and faber
price: £7.99

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