Where Angels Fear to Tread - E M Forster

 I was put off E M Forster by the fuss surrounding the publication of Maurice in the early Seventies, then all those arch Merchant-Ivory movies that brought in the era of the aristocratic actor.  Not my sort of thing at all.  Nowadays I am more tolerant.  All I want is an author with a voice and style that stands out in the crowd.  Forster certainly has that.   Where Angels Fear to Tread a black comedy that pivots on two tragic deaths but nevertheless manages to maintain an atmosphere of genteel social satire.

The young widow Lilia and her companion Miss Caroline Abbott leave one of the quieter and more rural suburbs of 1904-5 London for a tour of Italy, suggested by the effete pretensions of her mollycoddled brother in law Philip Herriton.  Before long the Herritons receive the ghastly news that Lilia has become engaged to a young Italian - and fellow not only young and Italian but the son of that social anomaly a rustic dentist!  Italianate Philip is despatched to put a stop to this nonsense, only to find Lilia and her Gino are already married.

Worse news follows within the year.  Lilia has not only given birth to Gino's son, she has died doing so.   Her former mother-in-law Mrs Herriton does what any respectable middleclass Englishwoman would.  She sends Philip and his bluestocking sister Harriet to buy the baby from its father and bring it home.   Miss Abbott, meanwhile, feels obliged to involve herself in the enterprise.

Key to the novel's success is its brevity, only 160 pages in this iconic Penguin Modern Classic edition.  It would be difficult to maintain the comic element any longer.  Yet in that narrow space Forster manages to cram deep insight into all his main characters (and plenty into the deftly-drawn supporting cast).  The action romps along and yet all the pre-work, the structure essential to the farce, is in place.  If not quite a masterpiece, Where Angels Fear to Tread is arguably a significent work by a supreme master.