Book Log 2015 #37: A Passage to India by E.M. Forester

We were assigned this book in a world civilizations class (either 7th or 9th grade, can't remember which), and I didn't get past the first 50 pages. I'd been told since then that the book gets much better as it goes along, so when the Popsugar reading challenge said to read something you were suppose to read in high school but didn't, this seemed like a good choice.

I believe the people who told me the book gets better were lying. Or repeating what they'd heard from others. Because even though I managed to read the whole thing, it was quite the slog. The piece I linked to above kind of hits the nail on the head - it's a dated book, certainly in style, but its observations about the various relations (east-west, racial, and religious) still resonate.

Consider the incident involving Adela Quested and Dr. Aziz, the sort of mistaken identity plot twist that even in Forster's time was a bit of chestnut. Out of it, though, we get Miss Quested's realization that her desire to see the "real" India is naive at best, and Dr. Aziz's rededication to his faith and the cause of Indian nationalism. The event is tired, but the results are the sorts of things we see today.

I don't know if there's an easy way to reconcile this problem, as it's too easy to bail on this book before you start to see how its themes are still fresh. Maybe you can't reconcile it. So if you do pick this book up (or pick it up again, as I did), be prepared to work for your insights, and mostly not in a pleasurable way.

(Popsugar Reading Challenge: a book you were supposed to read in school but didn't)