A review by jonkmcconk
The Golden Bowl by Henry James

3.0

Read for my degree, which can sometimes pose an obstacle to the full enjoyment of a text; however, regular seminars are useful for penetrating deeper into prose that would otherwise go over my head. Having examined James' fiction from The Europeans through The Portrait of a Lady to this, it's clear that the older he got he developed a dense, loquacious style with a heavy use of subordinate clauses. I find that style difficult to get on with, and in that regard I'm grateful for group discussion to probe beneath the abundance of quite irritating side-tracks and get to the meat of the story. Luckily, the story is a very subtle, inward-looking study of adultery and its effect on the social bubbles in the Anglo-American upper class. James' gentle handling of characters that could easily be framed as irredeemable villains is refreshing and demonstrates that curiosity, not judgement, is one of his primary motives.