only connect

This is the opening scene of the film adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel Howard's End.
No scene after it manages to capture the feeling the book evokes so well -- the feeling of finding yourself through conversations and relationships with other people. We are seeing Mrs. Wilcox meandering through the garden of her beloved Howard's End. And she is alone, she is not speaking to any of the guests inside of her house. But we don't feel that she is isolated, her adoration for her surroundings are apparent in the way she moves towards the house.

Howard's End presents connections that are meaningful to the reader. An unlikely friendship is forged between two very different women (Mrs. Wilcox and Miss Schegel), and the reader roots for them, wishing she could find such a well matched companion in a world full of hollow friendships.

I read Zadie Smith's tribute to Forster's Howard's End, before I read the latter. In On Beauty's acknowledgments, Smith writes "It should be obvious from the first line that this is a novel inspired by a love of E.M. Forster," and Smith often talks about her love for Forster in interviews.

From an interview with The Atlantic in 2005, Smith offered this explanation:

What about E. M. Forster's work made you want to pay, as you say, hommage to him?

I suppose he's my first love fiction-wise. He seems to me a very humane novelist—and one who's actually much more interesting than he appears to be on the surface. He's extremely English. If you're born here, he naturally means a lot to you. Beyond that, I don't really know. I just really like him.

Sorry, that's not a very good answer. I'm a little bit chilly outside a Starbucks in a really awful part of town. Sorry. Go on. I'll warm up, I'm sure.

Both novels are superb and sharp works of literature. But I will always be grateful to Smith for translating a universal story about the necessity of connecting with other people into modern language in a modern setting, where while the impediments to such connections may have changed, the damage of not connecting still crushes hearts.