Very slow and needed more offensive caricatures

Named after one of E.M. Forster's unfinished novels, this book is a fictionalized biography of E.M. Forster, largely focused on the years between publishing Howard's End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). One of the strengths of the novel is the author's portrayal of the difficulty of living as an unmarried person (of a certain class), not to mention being gay, at that time; Forster lived with his mother for much of his life, though he spent chunks of time in Indian and Egypt, and always felt very bound by the expectations of his social class, even when abroad. The idea that he could have had a life of his own was unthinkable; no matter how far he traveled, or how long he was gone from England, he always felt duty-bound to return.

Cannot finish it! Maybe some other time.

I grabbed this book from the library in my usual, arbitrary way: I liked the spine and the binding, and the cover; then I saw it was a Europa Edition and decided to check it out. Then I never got around to reading it, and had forgotten about it until noticing it on my Overdrive wishlist.

Arctic Summer is biographical novel of English novelist E.M. Forster; it's mostly about Morgan's desperate search for love and companionship and sex, and how he basically didn't get those things. It's gorgeous and emotional and restrained, and I loved every word.

Overwhelmingly, this novel is just bittersweet. Morgan is so sweetly likeable (I know it's trendy these days to want unlikable characters, but there's something to be said for characters you also just want to squish) but his life so empty despite the people, jobs, and travel that fill it. He finds some intense emotional relationships, a few that translate into physical/sexual ones, but all seem lopsided and unequal -- some, because the other man is not as interested; some, because of racial and class inequalities.

Morgan's yearning for companionship just hit me so hard; despite all the changes legally and socially in some parts of the world, queer folks still can't live freely and openly. I'm lucky in my life that I haven't lost anything in being open with the person I love -- but it's easy to imagine a world in which I didn't have that luxury.

Galgut draws from a wealth of source material, and apparently includes real quotes -- slightly amended -- in the text, a technique I didn't notice, and the narrative reads beautifully. Every other line is quote-worthy; despite the slim size of this read, I kept pausing to meditate and chew over the story.

I'm genuinely sad having finished it; not just because I've ended a good read but because I ache for Morgan. I want a few more pages where he is not just fine -- because he is fine -- but where he is stupidly, insanely happy.

“Arctic Summer“ is a beautiful biographical novel about E.M.Forster. To be precise, it’s about the period he was struggling with writing “A Passage to India”.

Now, I should add that before reading this book all I knew about Forster was the little I had read in the introduction to “Maurice”. So I cannot exactly judge how accurate this is - yet. I have Wendy Moffat’s biography about Forster lined up - bought from the same wonderful bookshop where this one came recommended (Gay’s the Word in London - if you’re ever there, you must go and buy a book there. Or, if you’re like me, eight.).

Anyway, to come back to this book. It pulled me in from the start, which, to be honest I didn’t quite expect. And Galgut both creates an image of Forster as a person and manages to capture the landscapes he finds himself in in an incredibly vivid way. It was definitely the kind of book where I forgot that I was reading because it felt like I was there with him. I especially liked the way it dealt with the questions of class and race when it came to Forster’s relationships with Masood, Mohammed and Kanaya, and how Galgut shows Forster’s awkwardness, loneliness and longing.

It also made me want to read all of Forster’s other books as well as a proper biography. But mostly I just found it to be a very well-written book, and I’m grateful I discovered it. (And god, sometimes I really struggle with writing halfway decent reviews about books I love. This is such a case.)

I didn't even finish this, I just couldn't relate to it at all. I probably should have realised this from the description, as I have absolutely no interest in India whatsoever, but I love Galgut's other books so I thought I'd give it a go. It wasn't badly written at all, I just didn't care about the main character or anything that happened to him!

EM Forster wrote A Passage to India over many years, interrupted by WWI where he spent some time working in Alexandria. It was sparked by his Oxford friendship and unrequited love with an Indian student, Masood, who invited him to India. In India, men have close friendships, even now, where they are seen canoodling and holding hands in the streets. It is easy to see how in the repressive atmosphere of England in the Edwardian era, this closeness could have been both craved and misconstrued by EM Forster. Galgut has written a tender portrayal of Morgan Forster’s thwarted yearnings for love and companionship, where being an outsider in Egypt and India mirrors his alienation of self.

Biographical novels are tough to pull off, and for the most part Galgut succeeds in this fine tale primarily of a dozen years in the life of E. M. Forster (roughly 1913-25). While much of the book is engaging and gives fascinating insights into the man behind the literary masterpieces, it does, unfortunately, bog down and becomes somewhat inert periodically.