As with all collections of short stories, there will be favorites. I particularly enjoyed "The Helping Hand" and found "The Rock" gave me something to think about.Neither of these two fit with E.M.'s recurrent theme that homosexual acts should be regarded as fun and consequence-free. (He meant socially, not disease-wise. He didn't address the latter.) It is interesting to read the stories he constructed to convey this message.But E. wasn't just about that. His final story, written in collaborati...

This is the first work of Forster's that I've laid eyes on and It certainly wont be the last. I had to read two of the stories, the tragic "Arthur Snatchfold" and the funny "the classical Annex" for my Gay/lesbian literature class, but I ended up reading the rest of the collection once the semester was over. The two previously mentioned are certainly an example of the best and my personal favorites, in the batch of favorites I would also include "The Obelisk", another humorous story well worth t...

5 stars for Arthur Snatchfold.

Just about everything I love about Forster in 14 very concise packages. Some of these stories are wickedly funny, others remarkably tragic and half are very gay. My favorites were definitely "The Obelisk," "The Classical Annex," and "Dr. Woolacott," but the rest are very entertaining as well. The stories cover nearly all of his writing career, and all were unpublished for a variety of reasons (that reason for half of them being they are about gay men). If you're a Forster fan like myself, you'll...

Oliver Stallybrass offers in his introduction a bit of background concerning these stories. “On his death in June 1970, E. M. Forster left behind, at King’s College, Cambridge, England, a considerable corpus of unpublished literary work, complete and incomplete, and in a wide range of genres: novels (Maurice, published in 1971, and two substantial fragments), stories, plays, poems, essays, talks—to say nothing of letters, diaries and notebooks” (vii). A number of these stories—because Forster c

Most of these pieces were not published in Forster's lifetime; some of them, along with the novel Maurice, were considered unpublishable because of the homosexual content. The gay content is very understated by today's standards and therefore achieves the appearance of great restraint. Yet in a documentary some of the stories that feature same-sex desire were said to be "erotic" in nature — which goes to show how far these views have shifted.Some stories contain interracial pairings, which would...

Finished this book at long last after almost three years of very slowly savoring it at a rate of one story every couple of months. I'm both glad and sorry to have finished it - on the one hand, I never regret reading my beloved Forster, but on the other hand I wanted it to last forever...The stories: "Ansell" - Probably my favorite story in the entire volume; a beautiful little microcosm of everything Forster was about."Albergo Empedocle" - One of the only stories in the collection to have been

This novella forms part of a collection of short stories called The Life to Come, by the Edwardian writer E.M. Forster. For my review of the collection, link here. What follows is a review of the novella.The Other Boat is the longest story in the collection. It was completed in 1958, when Forster was almost eighty years old. It tells a story of a homosexual relationship between two men of different cultures. Lionel March, a young army captain, is torn between the two aspects of his personality,

This collection, complete with introduction, made me realise something I hadn't quite realised in so many words before:Literary criticism of E.M. Forster is so full of snobby bullshit.The intro here basically reflects what I've heard and read before - "Maurice" isn't as critically acclaimed or technically accomplished as his other novels; most of these stories weren't meant for publication because they were too crude and unpolished (read: too gay); he was at his best when he was subtle; whenever...

When English novelist E. M. Forster died in 1970 at the age of 91 he left behind a large amount of unpublished materials. The reasons for this are simple: either they were not deemed of sufficient quality or they contained sexual content that he felt could not be published during his lifetime. The most important of these works was his fully completed novel Maurice, which many, myself included, believe is his best novel—it's his most honest, least contrived, not as overwritten.Shortly after Mauri...

this is a great book if you love the craft of forster. the stories in this are short enough to read on the bus, but written in the same style and with as much care as his novels. each one is a perfect little package.

"The Obelisk" is one of my favourite short stories. Brits on holiday: your husbands are gay.

What a fun little collection, I didn't expect to laugh that much over E.M. Forster... I mean his writings always have a touch of the humorous, but I find not a lot of laugh out loud moments; here we have that, lighter atmospheres and a lot of cheekiness. Published also after the death of the author, we find him writing several stories where homosexuality is on the center stage, we have to remember than for most of E.M. Forster life, in his country (England) this was illegal and punishable by law...

(Warning: this book seems to have evoked my inner analytical writing nerd. Sorry.) Forster's subtle social commentaries tend to blow right over my head, and since subtle social commentary is basically the point of his writing, I tend to have a mixed relationship with it. This is a weirdly compelling collection of mostly-formerly-unpublished stories, though, in large part because it's such an incredibly mixed bag. The first section is made up of very early works, which consistently fall somewhere...

Since "Maurice" - the most precious and beloved above all novels I've ever read, I literally became obsessed with Forster and his writing. And after "Maurice" nothing could satisfy that craving of mine for something exactly like "Maurice" yet something different.At last! I have it. The essence of the "darkest corners" of E.M.Forster's soul (certainly I mean his homosexual short stories). And at last - I am able to appreciate and admire his genius when it is revealed without reserve or restraint....

I have a love/hate relationship with E.M. Forster. I have suffered through some works, only to fall head over heels for the next one I read! His voice ranges widely, from depressing and nihilistic to uplifting and romantic. Like every writer, E.M. Forster is at his best when focusing on subjects personal to him, such as the love and affection between men. These are an absolute pleasure to read, examples being "The Life to Come," "Dr Woolacott", "Arthur Snatchfold", and "The Other Boat." This col...

A few of the stories in this book are staggeringly beautiful; several are merely interesting. I'll be remembering the emotional richness and grace of the good ones, like Albergo Empedocle, for the rest of my life.

In the long Oliver Stallybrass introduction to E M Forster’s short stories The Life to Come and Other stories, Stallbrass explains that nearly half of Forster’s short stories remained unpublished in his lifetime. He goes into details about the rejection of the early stories, the latter ones are mainly about homosexuality. “If Forster wrote these stories (the latter ones) ‘not to express myself but to excite myself’ – the distinction is perhaps a little too neat and simple – they have all, in var...

This is a fantastic collection of stories from a brilliant writer. The queer themes are definitely present but the collection should not be viewed solely on that criteria, as there is a lot here to appreciate. Well worth the effort to find and explore something beyond the genius novels.