(Penguin Twentieth Century Classics version is the version reviewed)
(post first appeared on my blog)
More of a character novel than many modern novels, A Passage To India doesn't have quite the action or sex or even violence that features all too commonly in works of fiction these days, yet it is proof that such cheap thrills are not needed to keep the reader's interest, if the writer is good enough.
Although centring mainly on an Indian doctor and an English teacher living in Chandrapore, at around the time it was written (1924), along with their friendship, a large number of less important characters appear, and more importantly are developed, throughout the course of the story. The political conditions in India presented in the story are based on what they actually were at the time, and although it is noted in the introduction (or possibly the after-story notes, i forget) that even when Forster wrote the book, the situation in India was changing - for the better - it is still surprising to think that change was only coming about just less than 60 years before I was born. Then I remember apartheid, and segregation, and all that other bad stuff...
anyway, A Passage To india is something of a puzzle for me. I can understand, particularly after reading most of "Peter Burra's Introduction to the Everyman Edition" (included in my version of the book, but at the end), how certain happenings in the book would have been considered violent back when it was written, but these days, I doubt anyone would raise an eyebrow. And yet, for all the lack of action, and the fact that at many points it doesn't feel as if the story is actually "going anywhere" (instead it is just going), it managed to hold my interest without fail. I finished it, and I enjoyed it, I probably missed some of the subtler touches but I don't really care about that. I loved the descriptions of places and people and events. Often, I find that God really is in the details, and A Passage To india is proof of that. It's probably only two things that caused me to enjoy this book as much as I did; the level of detail, and the fact that there didn't seem to be a definite point to the story. When it reaches the end, you don't really feel like that's the end, but not in a bad and unfinished way. it's a little difficult to explain. the best way I can put it is, I am at that stage in my life where I've not got any long-term commitments, and there are many countries I would like to visit. I am only 21, so hopefully have at least a decade or so in which to go off exploring without worrying that I've left someone or something behind. I have no definite future plans. Somehow, something in this book "clicks" with all of that, all the way through. i could shrug and say, it's just because of the descriptions of India, India being one of the countries I'd like to see some day, but whilst I can't put into words exactly why it is so, I know that'd not be enough to explain it.
if you want to read an in-depth analysis of A Passage To India, in fact it's of E.M. Forster and his works generally, you could start with Peter Burra's Introduction to the Everyman Edition, being a quite detailed look at Forster's writings (though not covering any particular one in great detail).
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
I never thought the book had a lack of action; in fact, I thought it had a lot going on from beginning to end, both at the level of plot and on a deeper more spiritual plane. It returns to a common Forster theme: dealing with the Other. As in Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room With a View, a thoroughly English family leaves their comfortable little Edwardian world and goes to another land, where they have nothing to cling to but their own stodgy notions of superiority. They are out of touch with both the spirit and the flesh, and both come to a head in the Marabar Caves, where Mrs. Moore glimpses the depths of eternity and loses any faith in God, and Miss Quested imagines she has been physically attacked by Dr. Aziz. "Only connect!" Forster proclaims in his great novel Howards End -- and what we see in A Passage to India are people who are similarly disconnected from their deepest fears, and are forced to confront them in the Twilight Zone of India. Bear in mind: the book's title comes from Walt Whitman's poem in Leaves of Grass, which used the opening of the Suez Canal as a loose metaphor for connecting with the soul:
Passage to more than India!
Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?
O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these?
Disportest thou on waters such as these?
Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?
Then have thy bent unleash’d.
2 - jadester
interesting...when i wrote this review, i admit i was only thinking of "action" in terms of "action films" rather than a more general meaning...your point would also contribute towards explaining how the book managed to hold my interest.
3 - Rodney Welch
On that same note, David Lean made it into a pretty good film. Doesn't match the book's depth, but it's a pretty good adaptation.