"Kermode provides erudite and good-humored insights into Forster's artistic philosophies, plus deft analyses of the techniques of Forster's contemporaries, such as Henry James (whose style Forster disliked), Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford and Forster favorite Marcel Proust. Enlarging on Benjamin Britten's remark that Forster was our most musical novelist, Kermode shows how musical transformation and return of phrases was an art he practiced with success in his novels. Kermode makes the case that Forster's homosexuality was the reason for his long abstention from fiction and establishes that Forster placed himself in a cultivated minority above the working classes. Kermode is a delightful mentor for readers wishing to reflect not only on Forster's creativity but on the personal and social circumstances that restricted it."—Publishers Weekly