Is this a five star book if Ben Wishaw is not in my ear? I can’t say. I will say: I highly recommend consuming the book in that way, though. A gay story from 1910 is bound to sing with me too, since I haven’t read much set in that time period. And if I have, Likely gays and “queers”, meaning odd and weird are, to say the least, a pejorative. But I think the class differential also augmented this for me. It’s the kind of thing that resonates still in a timeless fashion, though tempered very much now. And this is, as Forster mentions in the end note, Very English, further exceeding my expectations.

In other ways it’s sometimes “too” quiet. But I’ve always liked books like that. It’s interior and probably “slow paced”, but that also usually means it’s brilliantly rendered, as it does here. The prose work was fine, augmented by Wishaw possibly—I’ll never know—and it far from overstays it’s welcome.

Can’t wait to read Alec, the recent novel that ties into this. I think extending the ending into a full-length novel. But I’m not positive. Any which way, I’m on board.