Intriguing, start to finish, which was both good and not as good. Sometimes perplexed by dialogue and theories, I also felt unsettled by and distant from certain characters that are meant to be the most relatable (Helen, and to some degree, Margaret), but I was still entertained and moved enough to keep thinking about it all.This novel is both very English and insular in attitude (a bit ironically Imperialistic, perhaps) and expansive, universal, even cosmic in symbolism. Complex, at times disjointed in style, especially narrative voice, but also imagery, plot and some characterization, the novel remains endlessly rich with ideas. Filled with drama, philosophy, politics, feminism, realism, Industrialist economics, familial intimacy, and, most of all, late Victorian-Edwardian England, Howards End calls for careful reading, if not re-reading.Some of my favorite characters now include Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox, so different in levels of class, age, and emotional intelligence, priorities, interests, needs, subcultures, and educations, yet bonded by mutual affection and two different forms of steadiness, but above all, by marital tradition, real estate, and the late Mrs. Wilcox. I enjoyed comparing the book with the recent TV adaptation starring Hayley Atwell (good though not great as Margaret) and Matthew MacFayden (a more faithful rendering of Henry), and I'm now eager to see the acclaimed 90s film with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins.Writers like Forster are why feminist avoidance of male authors is so misguided. He was ahead of his time and sex and species. With a somewhat bewildering worldview--and bestowing Helen Schlegel, among others, with shades of it--through Howards End, E. M. Forster still manages insightful humanistic exploration and page-turning fiction.