You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
I acknowledge the importance of this book and on that alone I would like to give it five stars. However, I just did not connect with the book. I tolerated it. It had nothing to do with the subject matter as my mind is as open as anyone's could be. It just seemed to drag on for me for the longest time. I was so happy with the ending because it was finally over with. Well, that, and it did have a happy ending. That was refreshing.
The book I had was the audio version. The narrator was very good, but perhaps that had something to do with how I felt about it.
The book I had was the audio version. The narrator was very good, but perhaps that had something to do with how I felt about it.
4.5 stars — This book left me with as many questions as it did answers, but one thing remained clear: in a world where people hate there is bound to be emotional suffering that manifests in all kinds of ways. It seems to me that one character decided to bury his feelings to fit into society, and two others gave up everything for the chance to be themselves. Someone else’s love story is and should only be between them and whoever they love. I have never understood why some people feel so inclined to tell people who they can and cannot love. The story is very unexpected at every turn and left me both enthralled and frustrated as these characters developed.
Alec Scudder is the perfect man. Cricket is the best sport and love is real
Hops a little too much and honestly Clive is gay and we all know it.
Beautifully written, and hauntingly relevant 100 years after it was written.
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
- reading this touched a lot of nerves and felt wonderfully, terribly repressed. it makes more than enough sense, considering how personal a novel it’s meant to be.
- maurice’s character and the way he’s described, being the protagonist, is so fascinating to me. stupid, not intellectual, conformist, and yet inexplicably charming to everyone around him. everything is handed to him on a silver platter, and yet you can’t blame him fully because to allow someone so malleable and shallow to trick you into believing that there’s anything deeper going on in his mind ….. that’s on them. he’s not purposefully or maliciously manipulative, which actually makes him more acceptable as a character than clive, whose manipulation seems entirely for self-gain. i don’t know how i was surprised by clive’s betrayal, i knew it probably wouldn’t work out, but i think the utter bluntness of their break-up and the severity of his ‘change’ ends up opening up maurice’s character more for exploration, which was pretty fun. it made it feel unexpected, because i guess i really wasn’t expecting my initial and occasional wariness about clive and his character to be confirmed - there were moments at the beginning where i felt not quite right about how their relationship developed, the demands he made of maurice (though just like how the people around maurice allow him to get away with anything by virtue of their own misunderstanding of his depth of character, maurice did sort of bring it on himself by blindly accepting all that clive gave - and denied - him), and the way they spoke to each other - very precariously and not very subtly toeing the line between banter and straight up spite. the fact that he kept sending letters down to maurice after breaking his heart, simply to say ‘we had better not meet just yet’? oh that made my vision flash hot red for a second. that fact that maurice answered these letters sincerely with thoughts of his loneliness and suicide ideation made me feel true sympathy for him for the first time.
- i had a lot of favourite lines i took down, but one made me laugh and i think about it often when i read mlm media. ‘both were misogynists.’
- on that note, i like that the author never pretends that how poorly maurice treats the women in his life is a sign of good character, just as is done with his conformity, his aimlessness, the shallow nature of his beliefs (+ fun that ada received most of their grandfather’s fortune simply by explanation that she was the favourite grandchild, despite how everyone loving maurice and him being in the patriarch position might have made us believe otherwise). in that way though his one defining attribute is how committed he was to clive, given that he never committed to anything else in his life, not to family, not to religion, not to societal reputation, not a single moral value besides camouflage to support his privileged lifestyle. he didn’t initially fear death. he doesn’t even have a strong enough sense of self to engage in self-pity after his breakup - he coped simply by taking it out on his sister, throwing himself into work, and continuing to mask as a functional human with his most impressive skillset - small talk. it’s interesting how this breakup finally propels him into growth of character - for the first time he feels agony, bitterness, loneliness for what he once had and lost, and he realizes that if he’s to move beyond it, he can no longer settle for conformity nor for being led by the hand. as he’s beginning to explore his own beliefs and how he’s going to move forth in the world (i really liked the chapter where he talked to his dying grandfather like a petulant child), he has to finally question what he is to live for, if not for people (the way the author flat out states no one matters to maurice, maybe his mother, but even then just a little - and you remember right he still hates women but i guess one step at a time). i love him feeling abandoned by both love and death - to feel strongly about anything is to grasp it by your own hands. and he simply doesn’t, yet. ‘he hadn’t a god, he hadn’t a lover - the two usual incentives to virtue.’ and i love how this chapter (28) ends though with what part 3 promises with maurice’s development - he tries to make amends with his family to no avail and absolute indifference, he throws himself into work, hobbies, etc. he still had no meaning. he wasn’t doing this for anyone, not even for himself, but what’s important was that he was doing it. he has nothing to live for, but nothing will come for him if he doesn’t move forward and seek it, even if it bears little or no fruit at first. ‘this work, like much that had gone before, was to fall ruining. but he did not fall with it, and the muscles it had developed remained for another use.’
- some of my favourite karma:
- ada getting most of the fortune over the male heir of their family name
- him apologizing to ada over clive and ada taking the opportunity to absolutely trample over him, not really accepting his apology and still being full within her rights to dislike him (despite worshipping him when they were younger!)
- both of his sisters being displeased when he tries to make amends and ease his conscience for having treated them like shit
- on another note, some analyses from a reddit thread lol (https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/dbclb7/just_finished_maurice_em_forsters_longsuppressed/ ) post-reading that helped me tie up my thoughts nicely once i finished (especially the point of maurice vs. queer characters in modern stories, who tend to be gay first, characters second).
- some of my favourite karma:
the way they went from ”’i should have gone through life half awake if you’d had the decency to leave me alone. […] perhaps we woke up one another. i like to think that any way.’” to ”’you care for me a little bit, i do think,’ he admitted, ‘but i can’t hang all my life on a little bit. […] you’ll do anything for me except see me.’” is astonishing
i’m glad maurice found his way to a happier year & i pity clive for returning back to living life half awake
i’m glad maurice found his way to a happier year & i pity clive for returning back to living life half awake
An excellent study of love in an unforgiving society. I'm not sure about the sudden conversion of Clive but I'd assume it was written before studies of such had been made.
For someone who writes intimate thoughts so well it’s puzzling to me that Forster can never strike a nice note with me writing intimate moments. There is always an artificial quality to his dialogues (no doubt his weakest spot) that prevents me from believing in any meanfingful growth in relationships.
The last chapter and the terminal notes saved the book.
The last chapter and the terminal notes saved the book.