Maurice opens with the eponymous schoolboy taking a walk with his prep school teacher, Mr Ducie. Maurice has grown up without a father, so Mr Ducie takes it upon himself to explain the “mystery of sex” and how the boy will one day settle down and marry. Maurice listens intently since “he knew the subject was serious and related to his own body. But he could not himself relate it; it fell to pieces as soon as Mr Ducie put it together, like an impossible sum.”
The book subsequently follows Maurice through public school and into adulthood, during which he struggles to come to terms with his sexuality. At Cambridge, he befriends Clive Durham, a Greek scholar with whom he has an affair. After Clive leaves him to marry a woman, Maurice visits a hypnotist hoping to be cured of his “congenital homosexuality”. Later, as a guest of Clive and his wife, Anne, in their country pile, he meets and begins an affair with the Durhams’ gamekeeper, Alec.
Forster’s groundbreaking novel, written in 1913 and published posthumously in 1971, is read by the actor Ben Whishaw, whose subtle, sensitive delivery captures Maurice’s loneliness and longing for a life where he can be himself away from prying eyes. He concludes with the “Terminal note”, written in 1960, which finds Forster reflecting on his conviction that the book should have a happy ending, thereby rendering it unpublishable. “If it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose, or with a suicide pact, all would be well,” he notes. “But the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime.”
• Maurice is available via Audible Studios, 7hr 28min
Further listening
The Bandit Queens
Parini Shroff, WF Howes, 12hr 10min
Shazia Nicholls narrates this black comedy, longlisted for the Women’s prize, in which a group of wives join forces to visit revenge on their feckless husbands.
Can I Have My Ball Back?
Richard Herring, Hachette Audio, 8hr 45min
The comedian and podcaster reads his candid and funny memoir about masculinity, mortality and his treatment for testicular cancer.
