This is the first book that I've just tipped over in love with in a long time.

Having seen the movie Howard's End, and knowing that E.M. Forster wrote in the late 19th/early 20th century, and having watched that episode of The Office where the Finer Things Club discussed this book, I fully expected it to be a dull, dry slog.

But it was not. It was a pleasure.

Lucy Honeychurch learns that the rules of society can--and sometimes should--be broken. She learns that she doesn't have to love a man just because everybody else tells her he's right for her. And she finally follows her own instincts to find happiness.

Some of the best parts:

Upon hearing Lucy playing the piano ("...she loved to play on the side of Victory," Forster writes, though "she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one of her age and situation," the vicar Mr. Beebe says,"If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her."

While on vacation in Italy, Lucy and her annoying older cousin/chaperone Charlotte are staying at this place that caters to British tourists. There, they meet the old Mr. Emerson and his son George, who are sort of lower class, or at least other people think they are, when really Mr. Emerson just says what he thinks, which is never appreciated. Several in the group take a road trip out to a famous landscape, and Lucy finds herself alone. She goes looking for the vicar when she falls into a little violet-covered terrace:

"George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her."

After this, Charlotte quickly whisks Lucy off to Rome, where she meets Cecil Vyse, who is one of those people who thinks he knows everything and, on top of that, thinks he is very funny. He is not.

Lucy returns home and Cecil follows her and asks her to marry him (for the third time) and she says yes. She's happy for a while, until George and his dad move into town. That leads to this:

"She led the way up to the garden, Cecil following her, George last. She thought a disaster was averted. But when they entered the shrubbery it came. ...Cecil must go back for [a book:]; and George, who loved passionately, must blunder against her in the narrow path.
"No--" she gasped, and, for the second time, was kissed by him.

This next is my favorite part, when George is trying to convince Lucy that Cecil is wrong for her, that Cecil just wants someone to talk the ears off of, with all his stupid "witticisms" and holding forth on various profound subjects that he doesn't know anything about. But Lucy is tired of being talked at, and tells George that he is doing exactly the same thing.

And he says, "This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together ... But I do love you--surely in a better way than he does." He thought. "Yes--really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms."

Gah! That is a good line there, a surefire way to talk a woman into anything. But Lucy holds fast--I don't know how she does it--and George goes away.

What follows next is probably the most gracious broken engagement ever recorded, which may be the redemption of Cecil Vyse (who turns out to be sort of interesting, when he's not a giant prat). And then a happy ending that may have been brought about by the person you'd least expect it from.

Obviously, what I've written here is just the surface of the story. There's tons of deeper analytical stuff about the role of women in society, class divisions, Fate vs. God, the probably gay vicar, and how Italy makes everything better.

But you can ignore all that, if you want, and stay in the shallow end of the pool with me ... and my new boyfriend George Emerson.