(Penguin Twentieth Century Classics version is the version reviewed)
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.
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.