Maurice
By: E.M. Forster / Narrated By: Peter Firth
Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
A look back to illegal times
First, I felt like an idiot in that I’ve always said it as Maur-EES, and it’s actually MAUR-iss. Chalk me up as dumber ‘n a box of rocks. It took me quite some time to just get over the pronunciation of “Maurice” and get into the story.
Especially as the story rather drags a bit at the beginning. Maurice is a rather detached and dull boy, turns into a rather detached and dull young man, and the narrative reflects this, sooooo kinda sorta boring.
It’s not until he finds true friendship with Clive that Maurice seems to wake up in his own life. And boy do things really perk up when he realizes that friendship is rather an amorous love. At first he, in shock, shuns Clive, but Maurice makes the choice to live a fully-realized life, even if that means living a life in the shadows, a life of secrecy.
The book is full of passion, and Peter Firth’s narration reflects this. He does a wonderful job at voicing many characters in addition to voicing Maurice’s swinging emotions. Even though Maurice is kind of a jerk, especially to his mother and sisters, with Clive he’s only a jerk when Clive dumps him.
I was rather shocked that Clive honestly seemed to go straight as opposed to simply feigning it for society’s sake, but there you are. Apparently Maurice didn’t believe it much either, and he doesn’t take it well at all. Ahhhh, more passion!
Plus, there’s an attempt at using hypnosis to try to go straight that brings Maurice some brief respites from his carnal longings for men. I mean, he’s tryyyyyyyyying to do the societally correct thing. But he can’t help himself which brings him into danger, which brings him into a possible Happily Ever After Even If That Means Living WAAAAAAAY In The Shadows.
It’s funny, but I liked Maurice whereas I loathed Another Country, and both deal with living in a society that makes it illegal to be yourself. In the former, it’s illegal to be gay; in the latter, it’s pretty much illegal just to be black in America—one would think I’d find the latter to be more emotionally evocative. But I didn’t. I just found it to be heavy-handed as opposed to hard-hitting. And I s’pose I found Maurice to be more about love and passion rather than hatred and anger? Dunno. Maybe I simply appreciated it being barely 6 hours and 22 minutes as opposed to 16+ hours.
Apparently E.M. Forster was never able to live as he truly wished to, that he saw what happened to Oscar Wilde and became wary and disheartened. That this book was published posthumously and scandalized many just proves he was right.
Forster never got the Kinda Sorta Happily Ever After that he gave Maurice…
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