15-17

#15 -The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Tale of a shepherd boy's search for his destiny.

#16 - The Meaning of Mariah Carey - Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis

Her story of her life, as opposed to what the tabloids have told you.

#17 - Maurice - E.M. Forster

Maurice is an interesting choice for a "hero" in that there isn't anything particularly likable or extraordinary about him at first glance.  He's an average boy and then an average man.  He's in denial of his sexuality until he goes to Cambridge where he falls in love with a fellow student.  And yet, as he somewhat methodically tries to come to terms with his sexuality even going so far as to see a hypnotist in hopes of "being cured", which of course, doesn't work, once he decides to be who he is, he gives up everything for love.  And that is heroic.  Forster wrote "Maurice" in 1914-15, and for most of his lifetime, homosexuality was a crime in England.  It was decriminalized in 1967, and Forster died in 1970.  "Maurice" was published posthumously.  In the novel, after the hypnotist fails, he suggests Maurice could move to Italy or France where it's not a crime, but in the end, Maurice and Alec stay in England.  He chooses to live fully whereas other people fulfill societal expectations and live half-lives.  

This is the first writing of Forster I've read, so I don't know if it's the style of his writing, the time period it was written (perhaps there is shorthand that people of the time would have understood, that readers 100+ years later, don't have the context or norm of language for), because of the subject matter, or because Maurice himself keeps things hidden from himself, but the first part of the novel seemed somewhat hidden, if that makes sense.  Like things were being alluded to, talked around, rather than directly addressed. It was hard to stay engaged.  That changed for me in the middle, it felt like it opened up more, let me into the story.

And I can't recall if it was a reviewer or Forster himself that commented (or a combination) but if he'd written a morality tale about homosexuality with a tragic ending it would've been publishable in his lifetime, but as it is, Maurice has a happy ending, no one is punished or suffers, and that was an unacceptable outcome in England for most of the 20th Century.