I had got through a good many novels by then too – stuff like Dickens and Hardy (O level syllabus) and anything off my parents’ shelves that looked promisingly racy (Nabokov, Murdoch, Amis) – but Howards End was the first book which utterly, totally, from the first word to the very last, STOLE MY HEART. Studying Shakespeare and Edward Albee in the classroom, my hand was always first up in the hope of being selected to read a part. I had even been toying with the idea of becoming an actress. Reading stories, grappling with ideas rather than facts – as a subject it had been a no-brainer when choosing what to pursue in the sixth form. I nonetheless lay this claim at the foot of E M Forster’s Howards End, recognised as a classic from the instant of its publication in 1910 and falling onto my desk in 1977, thanks to its selection on the curriculum for A level English. It’s corny to say a book changed your life and also, perhaps, a little hard to believe when the book concerned is not at first glance an epic firework of a thing, but a gentle, humorous, beautifully told story of two middle class families in England shortly after the turn of the century.
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