A review by rubygranger
Roderick Hudson by Henry James

1.0

This is the first American book written between 1850 and 1950 which I decidedly did not like. It does not succumb to a typically "American" style of writing, and is instead more European (which maybe makes sense because it's set in Italy). The narrator is highly observational, and describes his observations in great detail. But, rather than showing us what they look like, he tells us -- and this quickly got tiresome. I just really did not enjoy reading it.
It's similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray in some ways (which makes sense because they were friends), but, to me, it just read like a very bad version of Wilde's masterpiece.