A traveler steps off the road and finds
himself in an alternate reality. A sullen boy accidentally summons a
spirit. A man gets more than he bargained for when he buys his fiancée a
plot of wooded land.These six stories deal with transformations, the
truth of the imagination, and the effect of the unseen on ordinary
lives. By juxtaposing the Edwardian English with pagan mythology, E.M.
Forster created in this collection a work of lasting strangeness and
great beauty. There truly are riches and wonders in this collection of
six short stories, but to appreciate their essence, one is going to have
to give up the hard boiled cynicism of the 21st century and embrace the
romance, mystery, and pure wonder of fin de siècle Great Britain. The
mature reader who will let Forster speak for himself is surely in for a
treat. In these tales you will meet a spoiled young man whose life is
changed by a visit from an ancient god (The Story of a Panic), question
whether life is a rat race or maybe something more (The Other Side of
the Hedge). If you are willing to pay for the ticket, you'll visit a
land where the works of great authors (if not the authors themselves)
have a Heaven all their own (The Celestial Omnibus) and that classic
myths can be repeated again and again (Other Kingdom) to great tragic
effect. You'll also meet an irreverent faun who becomes the best friend
of a reverent clergyman (The Curate's Friend) and discover that the call
to wonder can be found in the strangest places (The Road from Colonus)
as well as the price that must be paid to ignore it.
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