Galgut, who, if nothing else, has undertaken a great deal of diligent research, is sensitive to all these aspects of Forster’s life and times. A pat explanation for this might be his incontestable status as a bridge between several contending worlds: between the “straight society” of the post-Edwardian era and homosexuality between the West and East between that old kind of late-Victorian sensibility and some of the newer approaches to art that were beginning to take its place. An inspiration to Zadie Smith, the subject of a recent biography by Wendy Moffat (“A Great Unrecorded History,” 2010), regularly adapted for film and TV, Forster has survived into the 21st century in a way that might have surprised some of the critics of the 20th. Galgut should have chosen Forster as the hero of this scrupulously written chunk of biographical fiction is further testimony to how shares in the great man have kept up. That the twice Man Booker-shortlisted Mr. Forster immediately after the publication of “Howard’s End” in 1910: a time of outward serenity in its author’s life but one that turns out to have seethed with private demons. The highly metaphorical title of Damon Galgut’s new novel refers to a project begun and abandoned by E.M.
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