Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy for the first time, dependent on a Baedeker travel guide and her stern chaperone, Miss Bartlett. As she explores Florence, Lucy realises the constraints of her middle-class upbringing and finds herself attracted to George Emerson, a young man also staying at the Pension Bertolini. Then an impulsive kiss and the confusion that follows prompt a sudden departure from the city.
Back in England and engaged to the domineering Cecil Vyse, Lucy meets George again. Caught between social obligation and a suppressed desire for a different life, she must learn how to be true to herself.
Back in England and engaged to the domineering Cecil Vyse, Lucy meets George again. Caught between social obligation and a suppressed desire for a different life, she must learn how to be true to herself.
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Reviews
My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction: how wholly one might feel for it and through it, how much it could do to you
Brimming with yearning and desire, the complexities of class, wealth and status and the constant feeling of uncertainty that accompanies being a young person - this is a novel I return to often
One of the most beautiful, poignant and poetic love stories as relevant today as it was then