Good lord, could any book be as obvious a first novel as this?

"Rickie, an obvious portrait of the author, debates philosophy with his set of brash, arrogant, lower-class, yet strangely enticing fellow students at Oxford. When his close friend Agnes becomes engaged to Gerald, Rickie's childhood tormentor and all-around dolt who nevertheless exudes a kind of golden, seductive, animal charm, Rickie is inwardly disturbed, but merely stumps around on his deformed leg, occasionally exchanging philosophic witticisms with Agnes's brother. Then Gerald is "smashed up" in a football match, and suddenly dies, stretching the reader's belief pretty far while still bringing up the question of just how bad medicine was in 1914, anyway. Rickie immediately pontificates to Agnes on how she can, nay, must grieve--must!--and somehow they end up getting engaged."

That's how far I've gotten, and that's where I have stalled. I didn't think I would ever say this about an E.M. Forster novel--although I could do without Where Angels Fear to Tread--but I think I'm going to have to put it back on the shelf and let it stew.