Book Reader’s Blog

My rating: 4 out of 5.

This is a solid piece of a story. I have not read E.M. Forster’s Howards End, so I cannot say anything about the parallels between the two stories, but I have to admit that the book was intriguing enough for me to keep on reading to the very end and gave me a lot of new insight on the Afro-American situation in the U.S. Other readers complained a lot about the characters being unlikeable, but I don’t find that actually a flaw in the story construction. The characters are unlikeable, because they portrait unlikable human behaviors. How can you like a man who after 30 years of marriage (and a happy ones, as we get to find out) just cannot restrain himself and betrays the wife? How can you like a rapper who on one hand is full of contempt for the middle-class society, and on the other when given a chance to join it blends in almost perfectly. Yet—these are real human beings. There are people like this. Do we like them? No. Q.E.D.

I was particularly moved by a short episode viewed from a point of view of a young girl coming to the college from a small city. She is so natural, so pure and fresh in her understanding of the art. It just shows how big the gap between her youth or spontaneity and educated nonsense of the college professor. Who was she? Was she Howard in his youth?

And the sad poor old Howard’s father… How I dislike TV.

I’m glad I read this book. It definitely was worth the time.