Something Forgotten

I'd just started reading E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread before being admitted to hospital. There was a battered old penguin paperback of the book on my bookshelves and since it's little more than a novella and I'd pretty much forgotten the details of the plot I thought I might as well renew my acquaintance. However, I'd struggled through the opening few pages with their abundance of characters and when I came to consciousness in ICU and felt like asking for some books to read I didn't feel up to Forster somehow.

Over the weekend I thought I'd better get back to my planned reading and, somewhat to my surprise, Forster's first novel proved almost unputdownable. The social comedy was both razor sharp and funny, the glamour and sheer 'foreignness' of Italy (to the parochial English) in the early twentieth century wonderfully evoked, and the sudden shifts to darker aspects of human experience came both naturally and shockingly. (I just didn't expect either of the two deaths involved.)

But here's the odd thing. As I implied earlier, my assumption was that I'd read the novel before, and judging from the publication date of the edition involved this must have been around 1985. Yet I remembered absolutely nothing. Does this mean that I dutifully read to the end in an entirely superficial manner without taking anything in? Or did I manage a chapter or two and abandon the attempt? (But the state of the book with a broken spine suggests otherwise.) 

Another mystery. Though not a terribly interesting one.

Must say, I'd rate Where Angels Fear to Tread above Howard's End in terms of sheer pizzazz, but a long way short of A Passage to India in all respects - but, then, that's true of most novels, I suppose. It's easy to forget just good Forster is.