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Title: What Maisie Knew by Henry James, Diane Johnson ISBN: 0-375-76008-3 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 14 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (6 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Tedium, thy name is Maisie
Comment: I'd read The Ambassadors, Portrait of a Lady, and a bunch of short stories - and I flipped through two introductions that said that this was perhaps one of James's most succesful works, so I picked it up.
What I discovered is that those introduction writers are crazy. This book is incredibly boring. It is, of course, well-written, and there are no parts that I can identify as specifically bad - but it fails to live, it fails to arouse any interest. Despite a surprisingly lurid and eventful plot, with people changing partners all the time, none of the characters ever feel really THERE.
Maybe it's because the adults are the genuine focus of the book, with Maisie just the hub around which they spin, and using her perspective was too limiting: James is best when he can fluidly illuminate the consciousness of one character after another, and there's only so much of that you can do through a child's eyes. We get the irony of knowing more about the corrupt adults around Maisie that she does, but this doesn't really allow for a full exploration of anyone.
All of this would be tolerable if we at least had a sense of Maisie, if we had a real sense of being inside a child's mind. But the star of this book is by far the least convincing little girl in the history of literature. Which means that her perspective never feels real either. It sinks the whole book.
I can't think of another great writer, actually, that would be less suited to depict the world of a child than James: immediacy, physicality, animality are the words that come to mind when I think of the way children live, and they're the last words I would associate with HJ. Tolstoy and Dickens are at one end of the spectrum and he's at another.
Don't bother plowing through this one: pretty much everything else is better.
Rating: 2
Summary: Murky and weird
Comment: I don't regret having read this book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't already into Henry James. The style is hard to understand, apparently because it was dictated, and the subject matter is even more obscure. I don't think Henry James had much experience with children: even assuming that Maisie is twisted by her strange situation, she doesn't talk like any child I know or can imagine. Weird moral undercurrents and jealousy take up most, if not all, of the novel. I wouldn't take claims of this book's modernity too seriously - it's more on the byzantine side. Read The Europeans instead: so much more fun!
Rating: 5
Summary: A Modern James' Story
Comment: I think this is the most modern of Henry James' stories. Young Maisie's parents divorce and then seem to spend their lives using her to get a teach other, until they develop other interests. Sadly, the story resonates today - immature, self-centered parents and the children that they create. Henry James' insight into the life of such a child is brilliant.
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Title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress : A Novel by Dai Sijie ISBN: 0385722206 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert (Oxford Popular Fiction) by Ouida, John Sutherland(ed) ISBN: 0192823280 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: July, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Eugenie Grandet by Honore De Balzac, Honore de Balzac, Marion A. Crawford ISBN: 014044050X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: April, 1955 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: In the Forest : A Novel by Edna O'Brien ISBN: 0618339655 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 17 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ISBN: 055321263X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1985 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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