"As for the Bostonians, I would rather be damned to John Bunyan's heaven than read that." - Mark Twain.
I finished reading this book tonight. It is my first Henry James book. I don't think I disliked it as much as Mark Twain appears to dislike it, but I certainly didn't like it. I think I made the mistake of picking Henry James' worst book as my introduction to him. I'm not sure how this one received the "Classic" distinction from Barnes & Noble.
The book started out good and really set the stage for a fine novel. All the pieces were there. A staunch feminist and her staunch anti-feminist, male cousin have an interesting and humorous first encounter. He invites himself to a feminist gathering where they both become mesmerized by a feminist speaker. This setup, along with James' detailed writing, seemed like the perfect recipe for an enjoyable book. Unfortunately, he really dropped the ball and wasted the opportunity. He abandons the male cousin character for far too long and does not really capitalize on the relationship between the cousins that could have led to many great scenes of awkwardness, tension and humor. Also, the anti-feminist guy very easily woos the feminist speaker and does so by brashly and unapologetically voicing his offensive and mocking opinions directly to her. Somehow this isn't a huge turn-off for her despite her own personal convictions. I don't know, just seemed super unrealistic.
The two other things that I really didn't like about the book: (1) Longest paragraphs ever. Seriously. Paragraphs often went longer than two full pages without a break. It's exhausting to read a giant two-page paragraph of a story that is increasingly losing your interest only to turn over the next page and see another giant un-ending paragraph; (2) James would have comments in parentheses in the middle of tons of his sentences. It was awkward how often he did it and it seemed to really interfere with the flow.
I'll still give Henry James a chance by reading some of his other stuff. Hopefully I won't allow this book to prejudice me against him for too long.
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