Alec

The classic love story of upperclass Englishman Maurice Hill and gamekeeper Alec Scudder comes alive again in this inspired reimagining of E. M. Forster's novel Maurice. Although told this time from Alec's point of view, the new novel successfully captures the spirit of Forster's original (even its occasionally fusty tone). As for the story: once the two young men meet at the estate where Alec works as a servant (which he hates), they quickly fall in love and make plans to live together, a risky proposition since homosexuality was illegal at the time. The advent of WWI upends their plans, however, as the two patriotically enlist, hoping to be stationed together. Unfortunately, they're separated, and both experience the respective horrors of war as captured by di Canzio's many beautifully realized, visceral scenes of combat. At war's end, having lost touch with Maurice, Alec is convinced he is dead and prepares to join his older brother in Argentina. Whether Maurice is dead or not adds a welcome air of suspense to the otherwise quiet but compelling story. If there is a quibble, it is that the ending seems rather anticlimactic, but no matter: the love story itself remains timeless, and its seamless reimagining is an altogether memorable accomplishment. One imagines Forster would be pleased.

Playwright Di Canzio's canny debut retells E.M. Forster's pioneering gay classic, Maurice, from the point of view of the gamekeeper who ends up with the title character. Working-class Alec Scudder is born in 1893 Dorset, where he becomes a voracious reader while at school, then has his first sexual experience with a man before reluctantly leaving for a servant job at Michaelmount. Alec is soon sent from Michaelmount to Penge, where after several months he meets Maurice and begins a romance that consumes them both. The two men illicitly set up house and embark on "their life together as outlaws," but their happiness ends with the beginning of WWI: both enlist and are separated, with Alec going through war's "dripping faucet of terror" and hoping to reunite with Maurice. Di Canzio liberally quotes dialogue from Forster's novel for dozens of pages, creating a satisfying blend of fan fiction and intertextuality. The romance and the wartime scenes are particularly well rendered, as is a postwar episode featuring Alec in Cassis. Less compelling, however, are the subplots, such as one involving Maurice's sister Kitty. Forster is a high benchmark, but Di Canzio makes a noble effort in this inspired work. Agent: Matthew Carnicelli, Carnicelli Literary Management. (July)

A sequel to E.M. Forster's posthumous novel, Maurice. Set circa 1912, written in 1912-13, and published posthumously in 1971, Maurice tells the story of a young man of the English upper-class who struggles to understand, then accept, then find love in a society in which homosexuality is a crime. Working with the same characters, di Canzio's debut revises certain blind spots in Forster's original--especially as they relate to Alec, Maurice's lover. In Maurice, Alec is less of an independently realized character than an apotheosis, the final embodiment of Maurice's long search for requited love. Enter di Canzio. He inverts the classist structure of Maurice by giving Alec a prolonged backstory and then retelling the story of Alec and Maurice's courtship from Alec's perspective, going so far as to reproduce verbatim much of Forster's dialogue. But di Canzio doesn't stop there. He further amends the Maurice-Alec tale by extending the timeline, something that Forster, who tried to turn the two men into happy woodcutters, abandoned when it became clear that no young men, regardless of their sexual preferences, could be happy together in the English countryside during World War 1. Picking up where Forster left off, di Canzio takes us to the Somme (with Alec) and Gallipoli (with Maurice), yanking the characters forward into the turbulence that Forster spared them. Will the lovers survive? Will they remain capable of love after witnessing such senseless violence? Will the green future Forster wanted for them still exist after the war? Though groundbreaking in its time for its positive portrayal of same-sex love, Maurice is inhibited by its highly visible agenda: The author's intention for the book (that Maurice, a gay man, finds true love) is telegraphed from the first pages to the last, and every detail is in cold service to this goal. Unfortunately, though his prose is enjoyable and his book's relationship to Forster's original will bring real delight to readers who read the two back to back, di Canzio's novel suffers from a similar failing. As Alec confidently diagnoses the inequities of his day, he begins to feel outside his own time period, the emanation of an author more interested in serving neat denunciations of Alec's historical moment than in investigating whatever interior muddle that moment might stir up in Alec's character. This may not bother some readers. But for those looking to feel embedded in the period, di Canzio will disappoint. Fast, fluent, and enjoyable--but unconcerned with evoking the lived experiences of the characters. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.