Finding A Room with a View

The idea of travel always seems attractive, doesn't it?  To leave behind our humdrum, everyday world and enjoy life as a tourist.  To picture ourselves in an exotic environment and perhaps, be transformed by our time in that place?  Fortunes have been made over the years in books on this subject: A Year in Provence; Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun are just three examples. But the fact is, wherever we go, we take ourselves with us and most travelers come back home.  Lucy Honeychurch would be the first person to tell you that.

Lucy is one of those Edwardian, English girls who will tell you real travel isn't the flight of fancy you'd imagine.  She's supposedly on this trip to Italy, to pick up some of the culture and sophistication of the continent but she hardly allowed within speaking distance of anyone truly Italian.  Her irritating, old-maid cousin is always at her side, the hotel's land-lady has a cockney accent and all the other guests there are English as well.  To make things worse, the reservations got mixed up and she didn't get A Room With a View.

That's the opening situation in E. M Forster's story of what travel can and can't do.  Lucy is a young woman at the edge of adulthood, about to make life-changing choices.  Her cousin and other guests sense it, potential reveals itself when she plays the piano.  And all of these good people want her to make the right choices so they try and limit her exposure to the bits of Italy they approve of.  But, fate and travel sometimes circumvent the very best-intentioned limits.

Despite her guided tours and chaperone, Lucy witnesses chaos and romance while she's in Florence and she retreats to England, ready to marry the deeply pretentious Cecil Vyse.  (Great name for a silly man, right?) Fate and nature still have a few tricks up their sleeve and Lucy eventually will choose whether she wants the kind of life she's seen others live or a future that feels right for her.

This sweet tale has been adapted to film a few times, most memorably in 1986 (Have 30 years gone by that fast?) by the Merchant-Ivory company.  While I never recommend a film adaptation over a book, this is a beautiful accessory if you want a video version of the story.

Maybe we don't always have an opportunity to travel.  And travel may not always change our lives. But a good travel story can still open our eyes and give us a break from everyday life.  And in fiction, we always get A Room With A View.