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William di Canzio's Alec, inspired by Maurice, E. M. Forster's secret novel of a happy same-sex love affair, tells the story of Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper Maurice Hall falls in love with in Forster's classic, published only after the author's death.
Di Canzio follows their story past the end of Maurice to the front lines of battle in World War I and beyond. Forster, who tried to write an epilogue about the future of his characters, was stymied by the radical change that the Great War brought to their world. With the hindsight of a century, di Canzio imagines a future for them and a past for Alec-a young villager possessed of remarkable passion and self-knowledge.
Di Canzio follows their story past the end of Maurice to the front lines of battle in World War I and beyond. Forster, who tried to write an epilogue about the future of his characters, was stymied by the radical change that the Great War brought to their world. With the hindsight of a century, di Canzio imagines a future for them and a past for Alec-a young villager possessed of remarkable passion and self-knowledge.
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Reviews
"There's a sweeping romantic vision here that's as old-fashioned as it is refreshingly modern, with this war-torn couple pining away for each other as they hold their love in the highest esteem, in bold defiance of English laws and customs . . . Di Canzio's novel reads like an attempt to make these forgotten men feel less alone, to proliferate their stories . . . Alec is fiction as queer archaeolo
Manuel Betancourt, The New York Times Book Review
"Alec is the kind of novel Maurice could never be, full of sex and war, death and torture. Di Canzio's descriptions of their experiences are harrowing, tender, brutal, and comic . . . The question Maurice raised"
is there anywhere these men can truly be together?
"Just when it began to seem that I couldn't read E. M. Forster's Maurice one more time, as much as I love it, here's Alec, William di Canzio's brilliant reimagining of Forster's classic. Alec extends Maurice, delivers it to us intact but refreshed and reconsidered. I, for one, am extremely grateful."
Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours