Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Howards End

Howards End
Howards End
Author: E. M. Forster
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 813 more book reviews


At the turn of the twentieth century, three families meet by chance and their lives become hopelessly intertwined. Each family represents a gradation of English middle class: the rich capitalists, the intellectual bourgeoisie, and the struggling lower-middle class. The novel quickly becomes a sociological study and a platform for the authors philosophy. The events in the novel all tend to gravitate towards a country house dubbed Howards End. The tone of the novel is strikingly intellectual but often events are clouded in glittering prose. The explanation comes pages later, yet still in a roundabout way. The reader can guess what has happened; why not blurt it out? While the sequence of events is straightforward and logical, at times the intervening writing and dialogue are tedious at best.