Review: 'Alec' is an Inspired Sequel to E.M. Forster's 'Maurice"

E.M. Forster's wrote "Maurice" in 1913, but it was not published until after his death in 1971 due to fears of public backlash because it was an unashamed love story between two men of different social classes in Edwardian England. He also thought it would be prosecutable under British law, because homosexuality was a crime.

Forster insisted that the story of lawyer Maurice Hall and gamekeeper Alec Scudder should end happily, and their passionate reunion in that idyllic country boathouse is an indelible manifesto of gay love. But Forster wasn't finished; he always intended to write a sequel.

Playwright William di Canzio picks up the story, doing the impossible: Writing an inspired sequel that continues the story of Maurice and Alec's relationship and their defiance of oppressive sexual and class mores of the era in order to build their lives together.

When Forster's book was released in 1971 the straight press was hostile, but scholars and the gay press rightly praised its literary merits and, more importantly, it was instantly recognized as a literary masterpiece by gay readers. The 1987 film adaptation, by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, stayed faithful to the book and made stars of James Wilby and Rupert Graves as the lovers.

Di Canzio fills in more of Alec's life, his family, and, crucially, he loses none of Scudder's feral edge, natural intelligence, and moral courage when he risks everything to be with Maurice. The book conjures the louche world of the London gay underground, with fully dimensional characters.

The dialogue cycles between all the characters, and their varying regional dialects are flawless rendered. Di Canzio's depiction of Britain and France before the WWI, and the collective trauma the nations experienced, is deeply moving.

After their fateful reunion in the boathouse, the pair move to London, under the social cover of Alec being hired by Hall to help him design a working farm business in a remote rural setting.

They plan to live outside of the oppressive mores of society, but their plans are interrupted by WWI, and they enlist together, but are separated by class. Maurice attempts to use his position to keep them together, but he doesn't succeed. Maurice is commissioned as a gentlemen officer and Alec dispatched to the front lines. The period detail of Britain at war and Di Canzio's visceral depiction of the effects of the men in the trenches in France is searing and authentic.

Di Canzio, of course, can write an uncensored story of the lovers without facing the cultural or legal backlash that kept Forster from writing his sequel. But Di Canzio writes pays great homage in the same classicist style of dramatic literature that made Forster a groundbreaking novelist of his time.

There are very few sequels of literary classics that achieve anything more than a commercial opportunity. This book is a rare exception. "Alec" belongs right next to "Maurice" on your gay literature bookshelf. "Alec" is passionate, romantic and heroic.

"Alec," by William di Canzio, is available now in hardcover from Farrar, Straus & Giroux for $27.00
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