The Longest Journey (Bantam Classic) [Paperback]

E.M. Forster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 1997 | Series: Bantam Classic

Bookish, sensitive Rickie Elliot is quite at home amid the placid and scholarly environs of Cambridge. That is, until he falls for the shallow young Agnes Pembroke. Forster skewers undergraduate philosophical debate, the opening day of a public school, and tea with a frightful dowager, as the dire consequences of mistaken love later developed in Howard's End take their toll. Together, these elements combine to form a deft blend of tragedy and social satire that readers will savor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of [Forster''s] works. (Lionel Trilling)

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

Bookish, sensitive Rickie Elliot is quite at home amid the placid and scholarly environs of Cambridge. That is, until he falls for the shallow young Agnes Pembroke. Forster skewers undergraduate philosophical debate, the opening day of a public school, and tea with a frightful dowager, as the dire consequences of mistaken love later developed in Howard's End take their toll. Together, these elements combine to form a deft blend of tragedy and social satire that readers will savor.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Classics; Reprint edition (March 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553214551
• ISBN-13: 978-0553214550
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,682,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Social commentary and metaphor, January 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Longest Journey (Bantam Classic) (Paperback)

Like all Forster's novels, the plot of 'The Longest Journey' is secondary to the underlying themes - the new 'mechanical' society that Forster hated, being true to yourself and class structure. It's not the kind of book you pick up in an airport - it's thought provoking and wonderfully written.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes stuffy, but great characters and social commentary, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Longest Journey (Bantam Classic) (Paperback)

The Longest Journey can be difficult to get into, but is worth the effort. Set at the end of the Victorian period in England, it follows the character of Rickie Elliot from his Cambridge days through various attempts to find happiness and fulfillment in life. It helps to know a little about British society to fully understand each character's actions. The fascinating thing about the novel is that there isn't a single character that you can pinpoint as good or bad -- like real people, the characters lie and put on false fronts. It's fun to discover just who Rickie's friends and relatives really are. Characters like Agnes, who Rickie loves, and Mrs. Failing, his relative, make some great points about women in society. Although this book is primarily a "novel of manners" like Jane Austen would write, there are several exciting plot twists, including a surprise ending. If you enjoy books by authors like Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, try The Longest Journey.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful, November 16, 2007

By 

Giordano Bruno - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Longest Journey (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Forster's The Longest Journey is painfully bad: painfully awkward, painfully closeted, painfully dated, painfully class-conscious, painfully defiant of the norms of story-telling, painfully sententious at times and preachy. It's also painfully true.

It's a "college" novel, like many others depicting the lives of its characters fatally determined by the inherently contingent friendships one forms in the nursery of one's college circle. I read it first in 1962, when I was living in painful intimacy with my "peers" in a painfully cloistered House at a painfully famous university. I suppose I had to write a painfully trivial paper about it. Now I've read it again, and I find that, seen backwards through the telescope of years, it's uproariously funny. I don't remember having that impression the first time. I imagine I found it more serious when I was living in it.

I wonder why novels of the early 20th C seem so much more dated and mawkish at times than, for instance, Trollope or Fielding or Smollett? Perhaps it's the embarrassment that teenagers feel about their parents when those parents claim to have been young once and reveal the turmoils that only the current generation can take seriously. Anyway, I suspect that many readers will underrate this novel because of that uneasiness. All I can say is, if you're not reading it for homework, nobody will make you enjoy it. But if you give it a chance, you may find that it's painfully moving and beautiful.