E. M. Forster's first novel tackles issues of national identity and the potential for interpersonal connection despite societal inequalities that would preoccupy Forster throughout his career. The action is split between England and Italy. Where Angels Fear to Tread culminates in a "song of madness and death" similar to the sad opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which turns raucously amusing in one of the novel's most memorable sequences, yet at times veers into farce.

The novel is gruesome, accomplished, and darkly humorous. The best intentions fail and well-known ideas of virtue and vice fall to pieces in it. This kind of tragedy is distinctively Jamesian, and Philip's tale unmistakably invokes The Ambassadors' storyline. Similar to Strether in James' novel, Philip goes to the continent in order to save a fellow countryman from disgrace (first Lilia, then her son), only to fall in love with the place, find himself in the unlikely position of defending it, and have additional "ambassadors" (Harriet and Caroline Abbott) sent in order to save his mission. John Marcher, the main character of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," and, in a way, the model for Strether, have similarities with Philip in his disengagement from life and inability to make snap decisions. However, Philip's tragedy is more difficult to accept because of his conviction that nothing can save him, which is actually the reverse of Strether's.

The action of this novel somewhat presages aspects of Forster's third novel, A Room With A View. As first novels go, this one is one of the best with a literary touch that Forster would continue to develop in his more famous later novels. ( )

I just completed reading Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster and unfortunately, I really didn’t like the plot or the characters, finding it an altogether depressing read. It is often called a “comedy of manners”, but I found nothing amusing about the book. From the very upright and staid British characters to the handsome but uncultured and rather stereotypic Italian, Gino, there wasn’t a sympathetic character among them.

For me, Where Angels Fear to Tread was a sad story of unfulfilled passions and life unlived. This was Forster’s first novel, written when he was 26, and I felt that it was uneven and at times rather cruel. Of course there were glimmers of his writing genuis but in this early work, he still had quite some way to go. ( )

I am left rattled by this novel. The plot twists were rather jarring. I felt my expectations being toyed with. There was a travel sequence in the middle that had language which delighted me, and some of the dialogue was really sharp. However, the plot did not resolve in a satisfying way for me. I’m doing a read-along of all of Forster this year and I’m looking forward to see how his writing developed. There is brilliance here, but in a small dose. ( )

The stuffy and moralistic English middle classes are in full view when the wayward widowed sister-in-law finds love in Italy with a handsome (and younger) Italian man and marries him. When she conveniently dies in childbirth, the family aren’t very aggrieved, but the thought of leaving one of their own to be raised by “those people” is not to be born. The family mounts a rescue mission to bring the child back to England. This expedition, shows the English family at their worst and sets the scene for a terrible tragedy. This is Forster at his finest. ( )

The title of this novel is the second half of a well-known saying. If you think of the first half, you know what many of the characters do throughout the book. At least the English, middle-class set of characters. They break like a giant wave against the boulder of indolence that is the hallmark of the Italian set of characters, epitomized by the legend of the patron saint of the village church. Caught between the two sets is Philip, the effete younger son of the suburban Herritons, whose sympathies are easily aroused by Italy and its people, in part because their inclinations coincide with his own. There is one crucial difference: the Italians in the book somehow find a way to make their way of (not) doing things work (even if this is not enough to forestall a horrible event), whereas Philip aspires to nothing more than honorable failure. In some ways, he is a forerunner of the pair of characters in Forster’s masterpiece, Howards End, Tibby Schlegel and Leonard Bast. If there is a narrative center to Angels, it might be Philip’s perspective, although it seems to be overdoing it to call him the protagonist. That role would be too weighty for him. In a moment of insight, he describes himself as “trivial.” For a brief instant, it appears as if the tragic climax of this clash of cultures might stir him to develop into something more, but this is quickly crushed by one last plot turn, and Philip seems almost relieved that it is so.
This was Forster’s first novel, but he had already found not only themes that would preoccupy him throughout his career (the emptiness of the outwardly-successful English merchant class, the limits and ultimate futility of aesthetic interests, the contrast with other, more elemental cultures), but also his characteristic narrative voice, nominally the anonymous, omniscient story-teller, but occasionally breaking in with asides that align him with an author creating a tale rather than simply a narrator recounting one. Here is an example, from chapter two: “What follows should be prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depth.”
I first read this some thirty years ago, but picked it up yesterday afternoon to help while away another flu-plagued afternoon; it was just what I needed. Highly recommended, a good read. ( )