Best Books Club Selection for June: E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

Edward Morgan Forster lived nearly a century, from 1879 to 1970. He experienced the decline of the great British empire, lived through two world wars, and saw the rise of American culture until it dominated the world as England once had. Raised by his mother and maiden aunts after his father’s death, Forster’s novels are peopled with the prim, proper people among whom he lived, yet carry deeper themes beneath the surface. This book was written when he was only twenty-eight years old. It is a delightful little story about one young woman’s attempt to rise above the stuffy, repressed atmosphere of her society and make contact with real emotion.

Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy with her spinster cousin Charlotte, and there comes into contact with an Englishman, George Emerson, whose behavior is totally inappropriate. His father may even be a Socialist! With wonderful humor and a perfect grasp of human frailty, Forster introduces us to a delightful set of English abroad and at home. Though Forster has fun with these characters, he doesn’t make fun of them, and we feel even the stuffy suitor Cecil’s pain at rejection. Everyone loves Lucy, and we see long before she does that there is only one course for her to follow if she will be happy. We have the view that she is seeking, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing it through her eyes at last.

A Room with a View is June’s selection for the Best Books Club. Our summer reading schedule is as follows:

June: A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
July: The Keys of the Kingdom, A.J. Cronin
August: Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
September: Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

Read along with us and send your comments via email to me at [email protected].

Reader Comments on The Chosen, and on Silas Marner

I remember my high school daughter and I going to hear Chaim Potok speak in a downtown Portland Oregon synagogue a number of years ago–around 1976–after having read The Chosen. What I remember most from his remarks was how he was extremely interested in exploring what happens when a person is confronted with two different cultures. Although it has been many years since I read this book, I gained a much greater appreciation for the Jewish people, their beliefs and differences from this book, I enjoyed the friendship between the two boys, and the sensitivity of the author.

Portland, Oregon

Who is The Chosen? At First glance it would seem that Danny is The Chosen, chosen to follow in the footsteps of his father who followed in the footsteps of his father, etc. to be the leader of their peculiar Hassidic congregation. This is only superficially true; essentially God is The Chosen. The Hebrew word for ‘chosen’ is neevkh. The gematria of the Hebrew letters for neevkh, nun, beit, chet, reish produces a sum of 260 which reduces, by adding the digits of the sum, to 8 and 8 corresponds to the Hebrew letter chet. This reduction produces the central meaning of the word chosen. Two levels of understanding are revealed, “essential life” and “life to enliven.” In both of these levels God is manifest, he is the source of life (essential life) and our relationship with Him is what enlivens our life. True living comes when one finds, recognizes and exemplifies God. Therefore, God is The Chosen, chosen because it is through him that man’s understanding of who he is and his purpose in life is realized.

Reb Saunders explains his understanding of God; “A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell.” (p. 263). It is this understanding that he attempts to teach Danny through silence. At the center or core all mankind is the same, seeking the same sense of self and well-being. Regardless of our culture, all mankind seeks inner peace through the divine relationship. The universal in The Chosen is the quest for a covenant and peace with God. Reb Saunders has found his path, Reb Malter has found his path, Reuven is on his path and it is Danny’s struggles to find his path that bring the novel home to the reader. Kim

I was very pleased to see this book featured by Meridian as a “best book.” Long a Potok fan, I think this is his best novel. He is the only author to whom I’ve ever been tempted to write a personal letter. And I was fortunate to hear him speak at our local university a few years ago. Two things of interest to me: Potok features a Mormon chaplain in another novel of his (Book of Lights)– in fact, he makes the LDS character a very positive one. (I think I read that when he was himself a chaplain in Korea, he had an LDS friend.)

In the concluding pages of “The Chosen,” I was very moved to read Reb Saunders reasons for raising Danny in silence. I could identify somewhat from my own experiences of being lonely in childhood, and I was old enough to understand the benefit of “knowing of pain”–to destroy self-pride and indifference to others. Later, after a few more years of experience, when I re-read “The Chosen,” I saw Reb Saunders’ method as an analogy for the separation we experience in this life from our Heavenly Father. We pray and plead for answers, but we learn line upon line. Marcia

I read The Chosen almost a year ago but I still remember the impact of the father’s decision to let his son live his own life, to be happy. It made me weep deeply thinking that if a father so set in his ways loves his son enough to let him go against the core of religious traditions, how much more does our Heavenly Father love us. Kirsten

This is my first time in a book club of any kind, but I was so excited about joining that I went right out and bought the book, The Chosen. I started reading it in line at the bookstore and kept reading it all the way home (as my husband drove) and finished it the next day (only took so long because I had to keep rereading parts of it over). I don’t understand all the Jewish words they used, but many of them were explained quite well. I went to the library today and they are “interbranch”ing me The Promise, Silas Marner and A Room With a View. It was enlightning reading this book as I knew nothing about the Jewish people. I laughed, I cried, I prayed…I was sad when the book was finished…I wanted more. I really enjoyed reading it and look forward to reading the other books. Thank you, Carole

I hope you will accept one more comment about “Silas Marner”. When I saw this title on the list and read your praise for the book I was a bit taken aback. I remembered having to read Silas Marner in high school and I had hated it! I had personally decided that I was not going to read “Silas Marner” and catch up in April on some other books that I had been wanting to read. As I read your comments and others about the book and how much they enjoyed it I thought I must have missed something all those years ago and I decided I would check a copy of “Silas Marner” out of our library, and see what I had been missing. I was still skeptical, and I started reading very slowly. I am happy to report that time and experience has completely changed my perception of Silas Marner. I loved this story of having personal faith challenged, finding peace and happiness in unexpected places and ways, and the miracle of pure love (real charity) healing a broken and lonely heart. As I read the book this time, I realized that when I read Silas Marner the first time I must not have been able to appreciate what he went through because I had not yet experienced anything that he went through. I had never experienced a trial of faith or the loss of something treasured, my world at that time was very small and untainted. My world and life did not remain innocent. Like Silas I have now experienced periods of times when I questioned my faith, my relationship with my Heavenly Father, and my belief in teachings that I had just accepted all my life. I have experienced loss and heartache, but like Silas through that loss I grew and changed, and found peace and love through small miracles in my life. Thank you for the opportunity to realize that I have grown and changed, and helping me to remember that sometimes that the greatest trials bring the greatest blessings.

I also finished reading “The Chosen”. I could not put this book down! I enjoyed it so much. I am planning on reading “The Promise” next. I have been a member of the church all my life. My father was in the Air Force and, as an adult, I have also moved quite a bit. I have had the opportunity to attend many different wards and branches throughout the United States. My husband and I have commented many times that all though the church is true no matter where you go, and that basic doctrine never changes, every ward is different and has it’s own “personality”. It is nothing as vast as the difference between Rueben and Danny, but it reminded me of that. I also appreciated a warm and sincere friendship between too people as different as Danny and Rueven. My best friend through high school and I were very much the same. We were very different, but it was a respect for and an understanding of those differences that helped expand our understanding and tolerance for differences in others. Gaelynn