Peggy Loh ~ My Johor Stories: Room with a View

My yellowed copy of A Room with a View

In secondary school, A Room with a View by E. M. Forster was one of the books I studied in English Literature class. It is a 1908 novel set in Italy and England about romance and the repressed culture of English society at the beginning of the 20^th century. The heroine is Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman.

I remember those warm afternoons in Literature class, sitting under whirring fans and reading portions of this book aloud, as instructed by the teacher. After each reading, she would take her time to slowly explain portions of the story while I was impatient to see how the story unfolded.

I just wanted to race to the end to know if Lucy and George Emerson did, “live happily ever after” and so this was the only text book that I read ahead of the class.

When a text book had parts that discussed a kiss in the fields and the heroine’s confused feelings, it was very intriguing to impressionable teenagers. Even at that time, I was surprised that the book was actually part of our school syllabus! So now whenever I come across a room with a view, it holds many fond memories of my upper secondary school years and dear friends in our English Lit classes.

Interestingly, A Room with a View was ranked 78^th in the Modern Library list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20^th century in 1998. This classic novel was also made into a movie in 1985 and won several Academy and BAFTA awards, and a Golden Globe among many other accolades.

Recently I discovered that in my travels, I had somehow garnered quite a collection of “rooms with a view” over the years and each photo tells its own story. It appears that rooms with a view certainly has a special place in my heart.