Scene One

My old mate Henry James will rescue me from this blizzard of unlovable novels I have been trudging through – now, where did I get up to? What were the last ones I read by The Master? Ah yes –

The Spoils of Poynton (1897) – classic stuff
What Maisie Knew (1898) – brilliant
The Turn of the Screw

She remained alone for ten minutes, at the end of which her reflections – they would have been seen to be deep – were interrupted by the entrance of her husband. The interruption was indeed not so great as if the couple had not met, as they almost invariably met, in silence: she took, at all events

Ok ok 4 stars because I’m too chicken to give Henry 3 (or, whisper it, 2). My rationale is any book which makes me think must be worth something.

I’m still puzzling it out. I’ll have to read the last few chapters again. Very near the end, there is a chapter where all the characters repeatedly comment

This novel marks yet one more qualitative shift upward in James's art. There is so much going on in this novel that it is really impossible to usefully describe in a review format like this (and ironically this novel began as an idea for a short story!). Suffice it to say, this is a deceptively diff

Henry James loosens the corset of convention in a comedy
of ambiguous desires and ambitions. Plenty of matrimonial
talk goes round in discreet, repetitive circles; the tenor is
always tender. A vivid worldling of 'a certain age' (41) ponders her daughter's future while manipulating a boring husby, prot