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The Bostonians (1885-86) falls more or less in the middle of Henry James’s career as a novelist, ten years after his breezy debut, Roderick Hudson and sixteen years before The Wings of a Dove. Its nearest chronology-mate is The Princess Casamassima, with which it shares its unusual (for James) political theme. The Princess Casamassima is set in revolutionary socialist circles in London; The Bostonians, in radical feminist circles in Boston and New York. Both of these ‘political’ novels are strik...
6/10I’ve never been so glad to put down an HJ. Even though this rates higher than The Europeans, I disliked it so much more, but a proper dressing down will have to wait for another day.
I found The Bostonians repulsive on so many levels. Where to even begin...James is creating a world where it seems he wants you to find certain things repulsive, and you do, as a 21st century reader, although not necessarily quite as he hopes. The novel opens with Basil Ransom, a gallant Mississippian, paying a visit to his Boston cousin, the austere but still young spinster Olive Chancellor. Olive has invited Basil north in the hopes that he will become interested in her widowed sister, Mrs. Lu...
I listened to this on audible while driving to & from work -- it took awhile, but the book allows itself to be 'read' in chunks. The story is certainly a bit too long (typically Jamesian, I guess), often melodramatic -- but, in the end, quite good. Magnficent characters -- Verena, Olive, Basil...The audible was narrated by a woman named Xe Sands - pronounced 'ex-y Sands'. she specializes in reading audible erotic romances -- so I guess 'Xe' is not chinese; probably her real name is Mildred or so...
This is one of those books i’ll continue to ruminate on and most likely decide my thinking was awry, maybe often. I have a difficult time believing Verena - i guess what i mean is suspending my disbelief for her. How anyone could live a couple of decades and apparently not develop any predilections, any thoughts of her own, even about herself? She is presented as a pure vessel (empty?) gifted with a divine afflatus of enthusiasm, and the capacity to engage any audience. “The worst of the case wa...
At first glance, The Bostonians is as impenetrable as a closed circle. Everything in the story seems designed to keep the reader out. There is little action and few characters the reader can care for, and the one or two interesting ones disappear from the narrative for long stretches. The background of the story, the rise of reform movements in the US in the nineteenth century, and specifically in the 'reform city' of Boston, has great potential, but is instead obscured by the personal dilemmas
Ransom's the name -Basil Ransom. Status, bachelor. Occupation : general brokerage, whatever the hell that means. Occupation at the moment - just having fun. Let me tell you about my evening. It was last evening. The one before this one. What a politico-literary gathering that was. The drinks were loaded and so were the dolls. I narrowed my eyes and poured a stiff Manhattan and then I saw...Verena Tarrant! What a dame, a big, bountiful babe in the region of 38-23-36. One hell of a region. She was...
Newsflash: Henry James is funny! Seriously, he likes to laugh. And he's good at it. Who knew? The opening of this book reads like a farce, a comedy of manners, a vicious taking apart of characters worthy of Oscar Wilde. It does diminish and get rather more serious over the course of the novel, but it never entirely goes away. Henry's vicious! In a good way. I mean, you may feel a little bad as he chooses to rip into the feminist movement as a target, but at least his chosen characters fully dese...
A claustrophobic and tedious book that has little to offer the casual reader, this is a still-life of a novel with almost no plot, drama, or humor. Olive, Verena and Basil are drawn with microscopic attention to detail, but they are boring narcissistic characters with few illuminating qualities. Miss Birdseye is the only vibrant character in the whole novel. The exchanges between her and Mr. Ransom are interesting and entertaining. There are exactly 4 such scenes. Before starting the novel, I wa...
Henry James should not attempt melodrama. He is a master of the sly revelation peeking sidelong out of a tangled sentence and should stick to that.The Bostonians offers a panorama of the American caste system, with characters ranging from New York Brahmins to newspapermen (the lowest of the low) and faith-healing hucksters. Nice try, but James is standing in his own light when he attempts to infuse this story with any kind of energy.Miss Verena Tarrant is the pretty and verbally gifted daughter
