I don't know what it is about Forster. He writes about the most unpleasant people, and yet I'm riveted despite myself. Not that the two sisters here are unpleasant, for the most part, but Henry Wilcox has one of the most unflattering portraits of a "good" man ever to have been written, I think. (I don't know how Margaret stands him.) I put good in quote marks there because Forster's style, as in A Passage to India, is both so cutting and so observant that the object of his description is not only sliced to pieces, but every single smug, petty hypocrisy, every bit of unkind and wilful ignorance, is on full display. Forster seems to have a particular talent for skewering, especially, the upper middle-class male of his time. His women tend to be slightly more aware, I suppose if only because they have to suffer and placate these fools while constantly being told of their own inferiority by them, but still. It's an extremely unflattering portrait of society, as I said.

And, as with Passage, the main thrust of the narrative seems to be the characters who are groping, if even somewhat dimly, for a life beyond the anodyne. They want more, they want to connect to something beyond themselves, and yet they're frequently stuck in environments where such a connection is an active social disadvantage, and causes them to be seen with suspicion or condescension, even contempt. Yet they keep trying. I suppose that's admirable, and admittedly it pays off for them slightly more here than it ever did in India.