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She had begun to speak slowly, with reserve and effort; but she went on quickly and as if talk were at last a relief. "My marriage introduced me to people and things which seemed to me at first very strange and then very horrible, and then, to tell the truth, of very little importance. At first I expended a great deal of sorrow and dismay and pity on it all; but there soon came a time when I began to wonder if it were worth one's tears. If I could tell you the eternal friendships I've seen broken, the inconsolable woes consoled, the jealousies and vanities scrambling to outdo each other, you'd agree with me that tempers like yours and mine can understand neither such troubles nor such compensations. ... Read more

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The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening for in the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled gants de Suede through a fat jewelled hand and, at once pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the thing he would have liked to hear. He would have liked to hear the figure of his salary; but just as he was nervously about to sound that note the little boy came back - the little boy Mrs. Moreen had sent out of the room to fetch her fan. He came back without the fan, only with the casual observation that he couldn't find it. As he dropped this cynical confession he looked straight and hard at the candidate for the honour of taking his education in hand. This personage reflected somewhat grimly that the thing he should have to teach his little charge would be to appear to address himself to his mother when he spoke to her - especially not to make her such an improper answer as that. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Unusual James
This is a great tale from James' middle period.It's also, from my experience of James (Portrait, Wings of the Dove, and about a dozen short novels and stories), not what I expect from him.The family of theeponymous pupil is a great grotesque creation, comic and unfortunate, andthe child himself is vividly drawn.Enjoy. ... Read more

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I walked back to the hotel, wondering how I could learn something about the Contessa Salvi-Scarabelli. In the doorway I found the innkeeper, and near him stood a young man whom I immediately perceived to be a compatriot, and with whom, apparently, he had been in conversation. ... Read more

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He led the conversation to the country we had left; rather as if a leash had been attached to the collar of some lumpish and half-domesticated animal the tendency of whose movements had to be recognised. He spoke of it indeed as of some fabled planet, alien to the British orbit, lately proclaimed to have the admixture of atmospheric gases required to support animal life, but not, save under cover of a liberal afterthought, to be admitted into one's regular conception of things. ... Read more

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It had occurred to her early that in her position--that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie--she should know a great many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Another example of art imitating life.
I was required to read this book for my American Lit class in college, and though I had heard that James was a bit verbose and that the plot of the novel was purportedly about the life of a telegraph-girl, I nevertheless enjoyed it thoroughly. The novel centers on a young girl who works at the sounding board of an English store. Because she is the main operator, she is privy to all of the customer's private affairs, for she transcribes all of their personal notes. Some of her insights regarding relationships and the often-intimate details of her state of mind seemed to articulate some of my own thoughts. The "hook" of the plot(as concern other female-heroines of her time) revolves around her intense fatuation with a male customer, with whom she eventually falls in love. "In the Cage" is taut, well-written, and eerily similar to the trials and tribulations of everyday life in the present era. ... Read more

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The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert.The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls.As every one was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables. ... Read more

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Never say you know the last words about any human heart! I was once treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a person with whom I had been acquainted - well, as I supposed - for years, whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn. ... Read more

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It was at Homburg, several years ago, before the gaming had been suppressed.The evening was very warm, and all the world was gathered on the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the crowd was equally dense in the gaming-rooms around the tables. Everywhere the crowd was great.The night was perfect, the season was at its height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long shafts of unnatural light into the dusky woods, and now and then, in the intervals of the music, one might almost hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic call of the croupiers rise above the watching silence of the saloons. ... Read more

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I HAD simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and it must have begun when I received my manuscript back from Mr. Pinhorn.Mr. Pinhorn was my chief, as he was called in the office:he had the high mission of bringing the paper up.This was a weekly periodical, which had been supposed to be almost past redemption when he took hold of it.It was Mr. Deedy who had let the thing down so dreadfully:he was never mentioned in the office now save in connexion with that misdemeanour. ... Read more

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It befell at this period, just before Christmas, that on my having gone under pressure of the season into a great shop to buy a toy or two, my eyes fleeing from superfluity, lighted at a distance on the bright concretion of Flora Saunt, an exhibitability that held its own even against the most plausible pinkness of the most developed dolls. ... Read more

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Her features had a firmness which suggested tranquillity, and yet her expression was light and quick, a combination-- or a contradiction--which gave an original stamp to her beauty. Bernard remembered that he had thought it a trifle "bold"; but he now perceived that this had been but a vulgar misreading of her dark, direct, observant eye. ... Read more

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The fair New Yorker is, sometimes, very amusing; she asks me if every one in Boston talks like me--if every one is as "intellectual" as your poor correspondent. She is for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can't get rid of Boston. The other one rubs it into me too; but in a different way; she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and regards it as a kind of focus of light for the whole human race. Poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But this New England maiden is, in her way, a strange type: she is travelling all over Europe alone--"to see it," she says, for herself. ... Read more

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HE had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former found a place in his life.He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim's death.It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept HIM:it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Altar of the Dead
The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James, about a man bsessed with worshipping his dead, is overall a good book. There are some confusing points in the book, mostly due to the fact that it was written in the early 1900's. The subject is very interesting though, and I really liked the ending. I give it 3 stars!! ... Read more

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Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me - should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief - to paint her beautiful sister-in- law.I needn't go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself.She has a manner of her own of putting things, and some of those she has put to me - ! Her implication was that Lady Beldonald hadn't only seen and admired certain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour of the painter's "personality. ... Read more

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There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; she glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled with his hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with unembarrassed vagueness. She directed to him the face that was like an illuminated garden, turnstile and all, for the frequentation of which he had his season-ticket; then she looked again at Sir Claude. "I've given her up to her father to KEEP-- not to get rid of by sending about the town either with you or with any one else. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Maisie, light of my life, fire of my loins
Doh!I meant Lolita.Well, I think that Maisie is a protyope for Lolita.She adapts to being shifted around by her parents and their various lovers by becoming something of a nymphette herself with Daddy Claude.This is a must read for all of us Nabakov fans.I'm quite sure he read it too.

The Corruption of Maisie
WHAT MAISIE KNEW is probably the weirdest novel by Henry James. He had already written of seamy themes before this, but now he writes a variation of one of his favorite themes--that of the corruption of the innocent. Maisie is a young female child, perhaps six years old whose parents are getting divorced. In the best of situations divorce hits hard, and this was far from the best. Maisie's parents, Beale and Ida Farange are morally depraved and care not a whit for the welfare of their daughter. Maisie is a good-natured child who wants only to be loved by the parents she loves. Maisie is the prototypical Jamesian innocent about to be plunged into a maelstrom of decay.

The terms of the divorce allow Maisie to live with each parent at six month intervals, and this she does. It is what she sees and happens to her that begin to cloud Maisie's moral universe. To begin with when she stays with her father, his friends paw her in ways that smack of sexual abuse. Maisie's mother, Ida, hires a governess, Miss Overmore, to care for Maisie. Soon enough Miss Overmore begins an affair with Maisie's father, Beale, ultimately marrying him. Ida follows suit by marrying her lover, Sir Claude. So now Maisie must adjust to a set of step parents. Claude's interest in his step-daughter verges on the incestuous--indeed later on when Maisie is thirteen, she outright propositions him.Ida hires a new governess, Mrs. Wix, to take the place of the erstwhile Miss Overmore. Mrs. Wix is a decent elderly woman who truly loves Maisie and tries to inculcate in her a moral center of goodness. This sense of goodness is put to the test immediately, when Maisie's remarried parents begin a new dance of musical lovers.

As Maisie ages toward young girlhood, she shows signs that she has well learned the lessons of moral depravity that abound. She has no problem adjusting to a series of new adults zipping in and out of her life as parents, step parents, and lovers of parents. Maisie even makes it easy for these newcomers to pull the wool over the eyes of their cuckolded partners by making suggestions to facilitate what is by now a familiar routine or illicit romances.By the end of the novel, a thirteen year old Maisie desires Sir Claude as her own lover. Mrs. Wix, when she hears of this, angrily demands of Maisie what has happened to the sense of moral decorum that she thought was by now firmly instilled in Maisie. The answer, of course, is that the sense of propriety was doomed from the start since Maisie early on learned the difference between words of decorum and deeds of decorum. The Maisie at the end of WHAT MAZIE KNEW suggests that children--or adults for that matter--need a ongoing foundation of goodness to show that the ugliness they may see unfolding around them need not envelop them.

Developing Moral Sense
Henry James' 1907 WHAT MAISIE KNEW provides deep psychological insight into a young girl's predicament, as a result of her parents' bitter divorce in Edwardian England.Inspired by a friend's comments on the "shuttlecock" lifestyle of a divorced child in the vicious game of spousal revenge, this novel studies the harmful existence of an innocent victim of a joint custody dispute.Even at the tender age of seven, Maisie realizes the wisdom of playing dumb.Although she reports little back to the opposing sides, Maisie keenly observes and thoughtfully listens to all that occurs in both her uncomfortable biospheres.Eventually she adopts the simple policy of not telling--thus refusing to provide more fuel for animosity on either side.

As in THE GOLDEN BOWL--a lengthy novel dealing with the marital and emotional battles among a very limited cast of characters--this shorter work could easily be adapted for the stage, as the chapters fall naturally into Scenes.James' protracted dialogues between Maisie and the impassioned adults who dispute her parenting rights would be delicious to dramatize, although readers would lose the private psychological depth as Maisie copes with increasingly new information.She reconciles her maturing lucid udnerstanding to the empowered adults in her universe with private schemes to protect one or the other parent and later, step-parent.

These intense colloquies are designed both to elicit information re events which have occurred offstage, and to stir Maisie to the brink of definitive action--which will directly effect the five adults whom we assume are most interested in her welfare: Beale Farange, Ida Farange, Sir Claude, Miss Overton, and Mrs. Wix.Little Maisie unwittingly serves as a catalyst for adult passion, while she secretly exults in bringing her favorite people together. One of the great literary ironies of this novel springs from the unexpected separations which her warm-hearted meddling precipitates.To her childlike logic, being Free is the most desirable status for formerly married persons--free to love and marry whom they choose--free to make a cherished home for her and to ease their own heartache.

Maisie is further isolated from children, even girls her own age; thus she is left to puzzle out the world using only her keen observation of adult interactions.But how can the lonely girl truly develop a sense of morality--at least by Edwardian standards?Is she herself Free to choose her new and permanent step-parents?Does she have the right to demand that the adults who love her make extreme sacrifices--just to retain her presence and loyalty?Does Maisie at 12 know what is best for herself?Which path will she ultimately choose?Her final decision will impact the lives of three far-from-blameless but well-meaning adults.Maise at 12 is too worldy-wise to indulge in Child's Play. This absorbing work is truly Vintage James.

Several Turns of the Screw
What hubris to review a work by such a major novelist as Henry James, even though WHAT MAISIE KNEW may not be one of his major novels! All the same, a review can perhaps be useful in two regards: by commenting on this particular edition, and by suggesting how the novel might appeal to those familiar with other James works but not this one.

The Penguin Classics paperback is crisply printed, comfortable in the hand, and well annotated. There is also an excellent essay by Paul Theroux. It gives too much away, I think, to be read as an introduction, but it does make a helpful afterword. If you do read the essay first, which is how it is printed, it may seem that Theroux has revealed virtually the entire plot, but in fact this is not so. James's narrative exposition is unusually swift in this book, and a lot happens very quickly, but his main interest lies in exploring the psychological depths of the situation that he has established; there is a distinct change of gear at roughly the halfway point of the book.

As Theroux points out, the novel is generally considered a transitional work between James's earlier style and his later one. Theroux also locates this gear-change at the point where James ceased writing in longhand and started dictating his novels to a stenographer -- a crisis described so well by Colm Toibin in his biographical novel, THE MASTER. The first half of the book shows a leanness of style and also a great sense of humor not often associated with the author. But the book's premise is intrinsically comic: Maisie, a five-year-old girl, observes the doings of the adults around her as she is shipped from household to household in consequence of her parents' divorce, as the parents take lovers and remarry, and then as virtually everybody else in the story take other lovers. The humor comes from the fact that while Maisie understands so little at first, the adult reader quickly picks up what is going on. The spider symmetries of the expanding web of sex make a formal pattern as clear and intricate as a dance, illuminated by James's dry wit and his beautiful ability to see through childish eyes.

Several things change at the half-way point. Maisie becomes old enough to understand a little more. The adults whom she had previously observed from below now become more conscious of her as a potential ally and start using her unscrupulously to further their own ends. Twists of the plot which had at first seemed only amusing now appear as quite nasty turns of the screw, as Maisie's affections and loyalties are forced into the vise. Questions of morality come to the fore, and eventually dominate the action. The narrative tone also changes; although Maisie's knowledge and moral awareness develops considerably, James is forced into using his own voice to describe it, as though Maisie herself has lost the words to follow her own farewell to childhood.

The reference above to THE TURN OF THE SCREW is deliberate, for WHAT MAISIE KNEW (1897) seems almost like a preliminary draft for the more famous story, published in the following year. Yes, there are differences: this is comic rather than tragic, complicit rather than mysterious, and much less hermetic. The child heroine appears to come through with more wisdom and less trauma than the situation might have caused. But the final scene is astonishingly close to the ending of the later story: a struggle for control of a once-innocent child waged between a humble governess and two charismatic figures who exert a powerful hold both on the child and on each other. Only the ending is different, though no less worth waiting for.

What Maisie Knew.....Do I Really Care?
I am not a Henry James fanatic, as a matter of fact, this is the first work of his that I have read, and with that I must say that this novel is horribly written and completely unrealistic in it's portrayal of the child, Maisie and especially her dialogue. I have been assigned to read this for an english class as an undergrad and I have tolerated many a badly executed idea...but never like this. Boring, boring, and more boring. And as a result, I am comnpletely turned off to James other works. I hear his other works are great.....read those first, you may fair better. ... Read more

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If there was something serious in Nanda and something blank in their companion, there was, superficially at least, nothing in Mr Mitchett but his usual flush of gaiety. "Did she really send you off this way alone?" Then while the girl's face met his own with the clear confession of it, "Isn't she too splendid for anything?" he asked with immense enjoyment. "What do you suppose is her idea?" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A Psychological Policier
If you are not prepared to read several scenes in this novel slowly and often, there is a very good chance that, like many academic reviewers, you will leave it thinking less well of the characters in it than you do of yourself for having, with only moderate encouragement from James, "seen through them." Not many of them are easy to like. Mrs. Brook in particular is, as James clearly implies in his preface to the New York edition, essentially a character in a French novel--charming, beautiful, terminally manipulative. But the pleasure of this book is precisely that it obliges you, by the precise obliquity of its writing, to recurively correct your notions as you move through a series of set scenes, transferring your allegiances as characters initially attractive come to seem less so, and as characters less attractive come, by their honesty or their helplessness, to the moral fore. The long scene at Tishy Grendon's, in which everything comes to a kind of moral head, craves such careful reading that even inveterately fascinated and loyalist readers of James will need to piece their way through it very slowly. Critics and readers who, understandably, wonder why all this fuss is made about people themselves ultimately trivial, need to be reminded that James spent his life as a writer teaching us, by the difficulty of his writing, to read (in just the same way that Bach teaches us to listen). It is "the fascination of what's difficult" that keeps us turning pages, though it must be said that what's difficult here is considerably less so than, say, in The Golden Bowl or The Wings Of The Dove. Ultimately, what is upheld in these novels is the willingness, in a world riddled with well bred rottenness, evil in spotless linen, to live without self pity or bitterness, and for this alone James should be required reading for Americans of the 21st Century.

An Uncharacteristic Gem by a Literary Giant
This novel tells a familiar tale: old-fashioned man enters a tangled web of wealthy British fashionable types, makes a proposal, and the web falls apart.Mr. Longdon, a wealthy old man from Suffolk, returns to London to find the children and grandchildren of his ancient love.Out of respect for this unspoiled affection, he takes an interest in the grand-daughter of his love and tries to pull her out of the circle of influence that has, effectively, soiled her.James manages some interesting and convincing characters, and these pawns interact in some magnificent scenes.It almost reminds me of Restoration Comedy, with its complicated dialogue and dramatic jumps in setting that resemble staged scenes.The major thread of the novel is the relationship between Vanderbank, a complicated but good-natured young man who has managed to penetrate that affluent circle, and Nanda Brookenham, the granddaughter of Longdon's lost love.Vanderbank remains deliciously puzzling to the end of the novel, and Nanda manages a kind of heroism.The conclusion is somewhat surprising; James, by this point in his career, seems to have moved beyond the endorsement of conservative values evident in a work like The Bostonians.Despite the surprise, though, it was a great deal of fun getting to that conclusion.This novel is as close to a page-turner as I have read from James thus far, and bristles with subtle interrogation of a rotting social structure.I have no trouble saying, like F.R. Leavis, that this novel ranks among James's best.

"Maisie" was better
Critics will often pair this novel with his earlier "What Maisie Knew."

Both novels deal with the child's / adolescent's emerging conscience, while faced with adult corruption.

In "Maisie" and "Awkward," we see James following up on his fascinationwith Hawthornian themes.

James's facility with dialogue, in which abrupt blushes are loaded with meaning, is apparent here.The drawing-room conversations reminded me of a party in a swimming pool; each character is constantly, in a conversational sense, "taking a plunge and coming up somewhere else."

I found this novel somewhat thin - read closely James's "Preface to the New York Edition"; can you hear James in self-defense mode?

Overall, not bad, but "Maisie's" somber and gloomy tone was better suited to the subject matter and themes than the "light and ironic" touch of "Awkward."

A Frustrating Book, Unlikeable Characters
I thought the value of this book lied not in its story (it was forgettable), but as a sort of cultural museum, allowing one to look intowhat English "high society" was like at the end of the 19thcentury.

What it was, I found, was horribly superficial and empty.Thesepeople had little to do with their time except gather at eachother'sparlours and chat idlely and endlessly.But with nothing to talk about andall day to talk about it, it was considered better to sound"clever" than to have something meaningful to say; style wasvalued in the absense of substance.No one said what they felt, no onefelt strongly about what they said, and the whole frustrating lot of themcame across as a bunch of phonies.They were all but toppling over withthe weight of their own pretensions.

The reason I found this frustrating,though, is that in his other works I have read (admittedly not that many),the reward for struggling through James' prose is his deeply penetratingunderstanding of human nature; clearly, James "gets" people, andit shows in his sharp observation and subtle wit.So that made me struggleall the more to peel back the layers of clever chatter to "get"what James was driving at, but after I turned the final unfathomable page,all I could say was "huh?"

Great Plot, Could Have Used a Different Author
When Nanda Brookenham "comes out" in her mother's salon, one question is immediately which of its male members she will marry--and soon.The urgency is partly financial:Nanda's parents seem to live almostbeyond their means and she has no dowry.It is also moral:Given thesalon's racy talk and unconcealed sexual intrigues, how can Nanda longcontinue to present an image of the "pure young girl" it wasassumed most men would want to marry?And finally, it may be familial: Does Mrs. Brookenham really want a younger female competitor sitting withher daily?

Nanda's choices seem limited to three: The handsome, clever,conceited Vanderbank, who she prefers, but who is not that well off and whomay be attached to her mother. The ugly, awkward, but rich and kindMitchy, who prefers her.And possibly, the elderly, conventional, but richand kind Mr. Longdon, who was in love with her dead grandmother and who mayturn out to be either a benefactor or a suitor.

Nanda's mother ishighly manipulative, not only in trying to arrange her daughter's marriagebut in meddling with all her friends' affairs.The grandmother to whom Mr.Longdon always compares Nanda was the eptiome of old-fashioned purity andreticence.The other central question of the novel is:Which role modelwill Nanda choose?

In the hands of a less verbose writer, The Awkward Agecould have been action-packed, clever, and even moving in depicting thelimitations of its characters' choices.As it is, James's hesitations,qualifications, and reluctance to fully disclose his characters'motivations partly spoil it.We know (as much as James will ever tell)which suitor Nanda chose.But we are unable to gauge whether she has beenmanipulative, and acted from cynical financial and social calculation, orwhether she has been "pure," and acted from real emotionalimpulse.That is, we never quite know which role model she chose (though Ihave my guess).

The novel is written mostly in dialog and reads in placeslike a play.Personally, I'd like to see it turned it into a play or filmscript.Simply cutting out a lot of verbosity could give it a clearmeaning and a real ending. I even think I know what she'd do with her lifeafter the novel ended. ... Read more

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The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them, though this impulse was not, as happened, like the gloating of some of his companions, to be compared to the movements of a dog sniffing a cupboard. It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have been calculated. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Dullest text ever written
"The Beast in the Jungle" is the most effective sleeping pill you are likely to find anywhere. I challenge any reader to go through this text in one sitting and not falling asleep or, at least, not to experiment a tremendous mind-numbing feeling. Of course, I haven't read all the books in the world, but I dare say that this is the most boring piece of writing ever conceived by anyone. I find it very hard to imagine something more awful than this. It's absolutely impossible, unsurpassable.

Henry James' style is so artificially conceited and pompous that you have to ask yourself if the trash he used to write wasn't a very calculated joke after all or if he's just trying to take the reader for a ride (a ride into a world of dullness and boredom, that is). The supposedly "psychological insight" of James is just a mere exercise in nothingness, the highest form of pretentiousness in its purest expression.

In this short???-story (James wasn't very strong on things like "precision" and "conciseness"), the terrible fate that seems to be in store for the main character after pages and pages of monotonous text, turns out to be that "nothing is to happen to him". Pathetic and childish. In my opinion, "The Beast in the Jungle" is the greatest proof that James was a dreadful writer (not to say "an insipid donkey").

Actually, James is so comical as to excite parody. In the old days H.G. Wells likened his prose to an hippopotamus pushing a pea and Ambrose Bierce said that James' work would benefit if someone took the pain to translate it into English. I personally agree with the two of them but, you know, many things that in the past have been judged as "ridiculous" or "stupid" are considered today, through some arbitrary process known as "reassessment of literary figures", as something pretty relevant and sophisticated. That's life, isn't it?.

"The Beast in the Jungle" is a poor story that serves James as an excuse for writing a lot and not to say anything significant. Completely worthless. In case I had to choose, I'd prefer to read a telephone directory instead.

Of course, this prime example of literary incompetence is regarded as a masterpiece by many scholars.

Well, each to his own... ... Read more

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None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him, and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, where the seeds of his strictness had been sown. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Bad Rap?
This novel is an anomaly in James's canon - a mid period piece which completely lacks the "Sinister Undercurrent."It is a comedy, everything works out fine in the end, and the characters dissipate in theair a few weeks after you've read it.However, if you are a grad studentlooking to knock out another thesis on the transatlantic theme in HenryJames, this one is a must read.Near the bottom of the list for me as faras James goes, but I liked it better than "The Europeans."Readit for curiosity's sake:how often does everything work out happily in aJames novel? ... Read more