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Reading Roundup, January 2024
Feb. 3rd, 2024 07:25 pmThis month, two novels about falling in love with Italian men.
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
I picked this up because someone had nominated an m/m ship for it in the Candy Hearts Exchange. They didn’t come back to request it, though! Boo!
I love Forster’s writing. This novel has a lot of class consciousness done in his usual way: a family trying to preserve their status, a working-class man who threatens middle or upper-class English stability, a pessimistic evaluation of the role of marriage and family. There are some lines that even echo The Longest Journey and Stewart Ansell’s philosophy on conformity, which was fun to see!
Neither of the two men in the ship nomination die! Incredible.
Instead, the death and drama in this revolve largely around a woman (Lilia, married into the Herriton family, first husband deceased) and her son with her second husband, an Italian man named Gino. Lilia dies early, in childbirth, after making this second marriage that causes so much consternation to the scandalized Herritons. Lilia’s siblings in law, Philip and Harriet (Harriet Herriton??? Really.), are sent to Italy by their mother in a harebrained scheme to bring Lilia’s son to England, despite the Herritons having really no claim on the baby. It’s an absurd social drama and written with knowing melodrama, which is quite fun.
I’m going to ignore all of that, though, and focus on Philip. Philip is described wonderfully:
Isn’t that just a picture of a man? He’s in love with Italy, and all of that romantic adoration coalesces into the form of Gino, who Philip wants to distrust but immediately takes a liking to. They enjoy each other’s company and Philip gives up entirely on taking the baby, instead treating all of the melodrama as background to his vacation in Italy and time spent with his new pal Gino. The baby dies—of course—and Philip and Gino have a brief but violent fight. Oh no, I thought! Their delightful camaraderie has come to an end!
How wrong was I? Philip states that he loves Gino after this encounter. Ha.
This is Forster’s first novel, and I haven’t read enough of his work to really contextualize that, but I think it’s interesting to note. The story is both bleak and comedic, and I am most drawn to the parts of it which express attraction to beautiful men and beautiful places; Forster always does this well. I think these stuck with me so strongly because, quite honestly, they’re a part of my own heritage. Writing in the early 1900s, Forster was describing the Italy that my ancestors still lived in, and in writing about that working-class life, I see some version of my family’s past. It’s strange to access the stereotypes of that time and to know they’re not actually that far removed, that it would still be decades before my family emigrated. This isn’t something that the author put into the novel, I know. I can’t predict how it resonates without that connection—it’s a fairly lightweight social farce otherwise, I think. Still, I’m glad to have read it. I enjoyed it very much.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
I came into this with expectations that were unreasonable, unfortunately. I’d heard from multiple people that this novel made them cry, I knew it by reputation as one of the all-time best queer novels, and these are unfair burdens for any one book to carry. Baldwin writes beautifully—I have plenty of highlighted sections in my ebook—and he does an especially good job of balancing beautiful turns of phrase with direct statements.
Where it ended up falling short for me, then, was in the actual story being told. The narrator David’s attraction to Giovanni is framed from the first as a tragedy because of Giovanni’s imminent execution. I think that I ended up looking both to solve the mystery of the story (why is Giovanni being executed?) and of the book’s fame (what was the moment/set of moments that so moved generations of readers?). This is a losing prospect—the writing carries me only so far. When analyzed like this, I thought that Giovanni was only moderately attractive, and David was alternately awful and boring. I simply wanted poor Hella, David’s girlfriend and fiancée, to get away from him.
I don’t think that this would have been one of my favorite books if I’d come in blind. I admire a lot of things about it: that prose, the first-person narration, the authenticity of the setting. I don’t really think that what I wanted was this story done a different way, or these characters used differently… I think this book just happens to be a miss for me, which is a bummer! I was really looking forward to it.
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
I picked this up because someone had nominated an m/m ship for it in the Candy Hearts Exchange. They didn’t come back to request it, though! Boo!
I love Forster’s writing. This novel has a lot of class consciousness done in his usual way: a family trying to preserve their status, a working-class man who threatens middle or upper-class English stability, a pessimistic evaluation of the role of marriage and family. There are some lines that even echo The Longest Journey and Stewart Ansell’s philosophy on conformity, which was fun to see!
About the inevitable death(s)
Neither of the two men in the ship nomination die! Incredible.
Instead, the death and drama in this revolve largely around a woman (Lilia, married into the Herriton family, first husband deceased) and her son with her second husband, an Italian man named Gino. Lilia dies early, in childbirth, after making this second marriage that causes so much consternation to the scandalized Herritons. Lilia’s siblings in law, Philip and Harriet (Harriet Herriton??? Really.), are sent to Italy by their mother in a harebrained scheme to bring Lilia’s son to England, despite the Herritons having really no claim on the baby. It’s an absurd social drama and written with knowing melodrama, which is quite fun.
I’m going to ignore all of that, though, and focus on Philip. Philip is described wonderfully:
He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in order to make him pass muster. His face was plain rather than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and bad. He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both observation and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook their heads when they looked at him.
Isn’t that just a picture of a man? He’s in love with Italy, and all of that romantic adoration coalesces into the form of Gino, who Philip wants to distrust but immediately takes a liking to. They enjoy each other’s company and Philip gives up entirely on taking the baby, instead treating all of the melodrama as background to his vacation in Italy and time spent with his new pal Gino. The baby dies—of course—and Philip and Gino have a brief but violent fight. Oh no, I thought! Their delightful camaraderie has come to an end!
How wrong was I? Philip states that he loves Gino after this encounter. Ha.
This is Forster’s first novel, and I haven’t read enough of his work to really contextualize that, but I think it’s interesting to note. The story is both bleak and comedic, and I am most drawn to the parts of it which express attraction to beautiful men and beautiful places; Forster always does this well. I think these stuck with me so strongly because, quite honestly, they’re a part of my own heritage. Writing in the early 1900s, Forster was describing the Italy that my ancestors still lived in, and in writing about that working-class life, I see some version of my family’s past. It’s strange to access the stereotypes of that time and to know they’re not actually that far removed, that it would still be decades before my family emigrated. This isn’t something that the author put into the novel, I know. I can’t predict how it resonates without that connection—it’s a fairly lightweight social farce otherwise, I think. Still, I’m glad to have read it. I enjoyed it very much.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
I came into this with expectations that were unreasonable, unfortunately. I’d heard from multiple people that this novel made them cry, I knew it by reputation as one of the all-time best queer novels, and these are unfair burdens for any one book to carry. Baldwin writes beautifully—I have plenty of highlighted sections in my ebook—and he does an especially good job of balancing beautiful turns of phrase with direct statements.
Discussion of the emotional impact of the plot
Where it ended up falling short for me, then, was in the actual story being told. The narrator David’s attraction to Giovanni is framed from the first as a tragedy because of Giovanni’s imminent execution. I think that I ended up looking both to solve the mystery of the story (why is Giovanni being executed?) and of the book’s fame (what was the moment/set of moments that so moved generations of readers?). This is a losing prospect—the writing carries me only so far. When analyzed like this, I thought that Giovanni was only moderately attractive, and David was alternately awful and boring. I simply wanted poor Hella, David’s girlfriend and fiancée, to get away from him.
I don’t think that this would have been one of my favorite books if I’d come in blind. I admire a lot of things about it: that prose, the first-person narration, the authenticity of the setting. I don’t really think that what I wanted was this story done a different way, or these characters used differently… I think this book just happens to be a miss for me, which is a bummer! I was really looking forward to it.
