A Room with a View

On holiday in Florence, young Lucy Honeychurch is scandalized when a blunt fellow tourist and his unconventional son offer to swap hotel rooms so she can have a view of the Arno. It's the first crack in her polite Edwardian armor. In Italy, among frank people and open air, something in Lucy wakes up, and when she returns to England, safely engaged to the insufferably refined Cecil Vyse, that something refuses to go back to sleep.

Forster's sunniest novel is a comedy about the war between propriety and honesty, populated by some of the most quietly hilarious minor characters in English fiction. It's short and warm and sneakily profound about how easy it is to muddle your way out of your own happiness.

At roughly 69,300 words, A Room with a View runs about 7½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

A Room with a View is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “A Room with a View” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.