I’m inviting people to talk about that one book that they feel others should read. This isn’t about promoting a friend’s book or the latest bestseller, this is about celebrating those truly special books, those pieces of wonder that leave their mark. Today, Rowan Coleman talks about E.M. Forster’s ‘Howards End’:
I think I read the book that really made me understand what it meant to be a writer, when I was about seventeen. Until this point in my life, I’d read books always as a passive member of the audience, wanting to be entertained, enthralled, excited and moved, and I still think that those are the most important aspects of the reader experience, as created by a writer - the impulse to turn the page. But it was while I was reading ‘Howards End’ by E.M. Forster that I understood that a book can be about more than simply what happens, it can be about what the book knows.
A great book can be a wonderful story and also have a bigger theme, a theme that resonates with the readers, a theme that they might just take away with them into the rest of their lives.
I remember it quite clearly, the moment that I understood this. If there had been a light bulb over my head it would have suddenly lit up. The theme in ‘Howards End’ is famously summed up in this quote:
‘Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.’
Know yourself, entirely, and be present in the world around you in a way that means something, those are the keys to living a meaningful existence.
If I have a theme that I write about over and over again, it’s the theme that speaks directly to me - courage. Take courage, have courage and try, even if you are frightened to death, which I often am, to live life as bravely as you can.
About Rowan Coleman:
Rowan Coleman worked in bookselling and publishing for seven years before winning Company Magazine Young Writer of the Year in 2001.
Her first novel GROWING UP TWICE was published in 2002 and was a WHS Fresh Talent winner. Since then Rowan has written ten novels for women including THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER, THE BABY GROUP, and DEAREST ROSE, which won The Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read 2012, The RoNA Epic Romance novel of 2013 and was shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year 2013 and is the book that inspired Rowan to release WOMAN WALKS INTO A BAR as an ebook (published 10th September 2013) with 100% of her royalties going to Refuge.
Rowan now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, and large family of four children, including surprise toddler twins. Rowan is often quite tired.
Her latest novel, ‘The Memory Book’ is published today. It is a stunning, heart-breaking and truly beautiful story. Maternal love and the fragility of life, this novel left me with an absolute need to pull my daughter close to me.