SOURCE: "Love, Madness, & Other Anxieties," in Encounter, Vol. 40, No. 1, January 1973, pp. 80-5.

In this unfavorable review of The Life to Come, Scruton describes the collection as unpleasant and indecent in its callow portrayal of homosexual relationships.

The theme of the values of friendship is a familiar part of E. M. Forster's repertoire, and one would not have been surprised to find it developed in The Life to Come, a collection of stories most of which have not before been published. This volume contains all the stories that Forster judged either too weak or too "indecent" to be published in his lifetime, and, in the opinion of the present reviewer, it is a great pity that Forster's judgment in these matters was not allowed to prevail. It goes without saying that the stories are far from bad: they are written with imagination and skill, and with the author's characteristic...