Scan barcode
beckinasec's review against another edition
3.0
"What it comes to," Strether went on very gravely now and as if he hadn't heard him, "what it comes to is that more has been done for you, I think, than I've ever seen done - attempted perhaps, but never so successfully done - by one human being for another."
The number of times I literally exclaimed out loud "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT" while I read this novel is exorbitant. That passage was like 450 pages in, and they'd been basically building it up and repeating it throughout the entire book, AND I STILL HAD NO IDEA WHAT HAD BEEN DONE OR IF I WAS EVEN SUPPOSED TO KNOW.
What did Marie DO for Chad? And was all of it undone by at the very last moment our narrator realizing what I HAD to think we'd all known and acknowledged and talked about the whole book, that they were OBVIOUSLY sleeping together????
Okay I really did think I would get to the end of this novel and still have every single question that I had at the very beginning, unsure if they'd purposely been unanswered, or if they'd been answered and I just wasn't getting it. I guess my central question that affected everything was: was sex implied everywhere but just couldn't be made explicit, or was it so beyond the realm of consideration that it didn't even need to be addressed and everyone just assumed it wasn't in play? Like. I genuinely didn't know if every single couple (bc every guy, like, HAD to be paired up with a woman in order to self actualize or something?) was unabashedly fucking each other and like they all knew it, or if even the IDEA that a single one of them was, was too monstrous to even suggest for a MOMENT. Did sex mean nothing or everything? I guess that was the central confusion throughout.
Maybe I'm just out of touch with the traditional morals I was raised in and I should have known. But SOME books from this period were not quite this enigmatic about sex, right?? So how was i to know.
But still, to actually come to the end and have it presented that Strether ACTUALLY was shocked and affected by stumbling into proof of it (and that they were also shocked and embarrassed for him to), after the whole book being about how much they were in love and should get married and maybe would go off together. WHAT. so like is his realization that Mrs Newsome was right all along and he'd been made a fool of, and that's why he had to leave? Or does he still believe everything he does and this is just an added complexity? Obviously he thinks they should stay together, so it was about him coming to a more nuanced view of morality? Or would he describe it as looser?
Thank God for all the reviews saying every sentence of this book was a maze, because I thought I was the only one who thought that. One of the most wholly incomprehensible books I've ever read.
But hey, enjoyed it a ton lol.
The number of times I literally exclaimed out loud "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT" while I read this novel is exorbitant. That passage was like 450 pages in, and they'd been basically building it up and repeating it throughout the entire book, AND I STILL HAD NO IDEA WHAT HAD BEEN DONE OR IF I WAS EVEN SUPPOSED TO KNOW.
What did Marie DO for Chad? And was all of it undone by at the very last moment our narrator realizing what I HAD to think we'd all known and acknowledged and talked about the whole book, that they were OBVIOUSLY sleeping together????
Okay I really did think I would get to the end of this novel and still have every single question that I had at the very beginning, unsure if they'd purposely been unanswered, or if they'd been answered and I just wasn't getting it. I guess my central question that affected everything was: was sex implied everywhere but just couldn't be made explicit, or was it so beyond the realm of consideration that it didn't even need to be addressed and everyone just assumed it wasn't in play? Like. I genuinely didn't know if every single couple (bc every guy, like, HAD to be paired up with a woman in order to self actualize or something?) was unabashedly fucking each other and like they all knew it, or if even the IDEA that a single one of them was, was too monstrous to even suggest for a MOMENT. Did sex mean nothing or everything? I guess that was the central confusion throughout.
Maybe I'm just out of touch with the traditional morals I was raised in and I should have known. But SOME books from this period were not quite this enigmatic about sex, right?? So how was i to know.
But still, to actually come to the end and have it presented that Strether ACTUALLY was shocked and affected by stumbling into proof of it (and that they were also shocked and embarrassed for him to), after the whole book being about how much they were in love and should get married and maybe would go off together. WHAT. so like is his realization that Mrs Newsome was right all along and he'd been made a fool of, and that's why he had to leave? Or does he still believe everything he does and this is just an added complexity? Obviously he thinks they should stay together, so it was about him coming to a more nuanced view of morality? Or would he describe it as looser?
Thank God for all the reviews saying every sentence of this book was a maze, because I thought I was the only one who thought that. One of the most wholly incomprehensible books I've ever read.
But hey, enjoyed it a ton lol.
benjamin_oc's review against another edition
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
fionnualalirsdottir's review against another edition
Reading [b:The Ambassadors|28363994|The Ambassadors|Henry James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459112559l/28363994._SY75_.jpg|1395409] is like progressing through a circular maze. The reader roams around the edges at first, coming up frequently against dead ends. Why is Chad Newsome so difficult to figure out? What are the author’s intentions for Maria Gostrey? Will Mrs Newsome, or even her more formidable-sounding daughter, Mrs Pocock, ever make a physical appearance in the story? The enigmas in this early stage are such that if the reader found herself accidentally back at the start she might be tempted to abandon the maze altogether. But it would be a difficult choice to make because in all her frustrated revolvings she has nevertheless passed through some exquisite passages. She continues, and little by little she finds herself circling a smaller space, and she tells herself that perhaps she is finally getting closer to the heart of the story. Yet even when a new direction seems full of promise, she still comes up against the same blind alleys as before and she despairs of ever getting to the centre.
At this stage she stops worrying about finishing. She's enjoying the convoluted paths, taking her time and appreciating every twist and turn. She is blissful in the face of the beauty of certain passages and asks for nothing more than to spend the rest of her life deciphering Jamesian sentences.
Her bliss is soon disturbed by a new preoccupation. In her circling she has picked up a companion. Lambert Strether, the main character in this third person narrative, seems to be walking in her footsteps or she in his. She may not understand all his thoughts and desires but she empathizes with him fully as he too circles the central facts of the story, enjoying the beauty along the way but encountering the same dead ends as herself. And while she enjoys Strether's company very much, her discomfort arises from a fear that he may come to grief before the end, and she herself alongside him.
There are many pitfalls in Strether's path: he is being used by almost every other character in the narrative while nevertheless trying to serve everyone to the best of his abilities. The reader wants to warn him of the dangers, to whisper, watch out, Strether. But she has learned something from Maria Gostrey. Silent support is what Strether requires at this point, especially as he is about to face the daunting Mrs Pocock, looming forth from what seems like another blind alley.
But Mrs Pocock’s bulk fails to hide the opening leading to the centre of the maze:
The reader can only be in awe of the writer’s skill in delivering her, right alongside his main character, to the heart of the story—in one blinding flash. She looks back at the manner in which she read the earlier sections and realises she was an innocent then, incapable yet of understanding. Now it has all come to mean something different; she has grown and changed just as Strether has changed: He had heard, of old, only what he could then hear; what he could do now was to think of three months ago as a point in the far past
If Lambert Strether and the reader finally reach the point of brutal lucidity, it is thanks to the unassuming character of Maria Gostrey. We wondered at the beginning about her role in the story. It is very simple: James needed her to keep the thread. Without her, there would be no way, happy or unhappy, for the reader to exit the maze that is [b:The Ambassadors|28363994|The Ambassadors|Henry James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459112559l/28363994._SY75_.jpg|1395409].
At this stage she stops worrying about finishing. She's enjoying the convoluted paths, taking her time and appreciating every twist and turn. She is blissful in the face of the beauty of certain passages and asks for nothing more than to spend the rest of her life deciphering Jamesian sentences.
Her bliss is soon disturbed by a new preoccupation. In her circling she has picked up a companion. Lambert Strether, the main character in this third person narrative, seems to be walking in her footsteps or she in his. She may not understand all his thoughts and desires but she empathizes with him fully as he too circles the central facts of the story, enjoying the beauty along the way but encountering the same dead ends as herself. And while she enjoys Strether's company very much, her discomfort arises from a fear that he may come to grief before the end, and she herself alongside him.
There are many pitfalls in Strether's path: he is being used by almost every other character in the narrative while nevertheless trying to serve everyone to the best of his abilities. The reader wants to warn him of the dangers, to whisper, watch out, Strether. But she has learned something from Maria Gostrey. Silent support is what Strether requires at this point, especially as he is about to face the daunting Mrs Pocock, looming forth from what seems like another blind alley.
But Mrs Pocock’s bulk fails to hide the opening leading to the centre of the maze:
the jump was but short to supreme lucidity. Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor.
The reader can only be in awe of the writer’s skill in delivering her, right alongside his main character, to the heart of the story—in one blinding flash. She looks back at the manner in which she read the earlier sections and realises she was an innocent then, incapable yet of understanding. Now it has all come to mean something different; she has grown and changed just as Strether has changed: He had heard, of old, only what he could then hear; what he could do now was to think of three months ago as a point in the far past
If Lambert Strether and the reader finally reach the point of brutal lucidity, it is thanks to the unassuming character of Maria Gostrey. We wondered at the beginning about her role in the story. It is very simple: James needed her to keep the thread. Without her, there would be no way, happy or unhappy, for the reader to exit the maze that is [b:The Ambassadors|28363994|The Ambassadors|Henry James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459112559l/28363994._SY75_.jpg|1395409].
sulaco's review against another edition
Do not like this writing style. Every sentence is so egregiously verbose, by the time I've read it I realized I've no idea what's being said. So many needless descriptors or vague concepts interspersed between every other word, turning what would be a simple sentence into a maze of vagueness. Feels like the writer was padding the whole text to hit a word count.
darioschmidt's review against another edition
1.0
Gott sei Dank! Es ist vorbei!
Vergesst Joyce!
Vergesst Woolf!
Vergesst Faulkner!
Mein Endgegner heißt Henry James.
500 Seiten später bin ich weder klüger, noch fühle ich mich auf irgendeine erdenkbare Weise bereicherter, als ich vor Beginn der Lektüre war.
James versteht es wirklich meisterhaft mit einer noch nie so gelesenen Akribie Belanglosigkeiten und Gemeinplätze mit literarischen Satzgirlanden auszukleiden, was irgendwie zur Folge hat, dass ich das Buch ehrlich gesagt noch nicht einmal für schlecht befinden kann.
Ja, ich halte es für ermüdend.
Ja, ich halte es für streckenweise unlesbar.
Und ja, ich glaube bei der Lektüre von James wird man vor allem seine Frustrationstoleranz mal ordentlich belasten können. Aber schlecht ist der Roman nicht.
Wirklich überzeugend ist er aber ebensowenig.
500 Seiten lang tritt man als Leser in Kontakt mit siluettenhaft umrissenen Charakteren und wird Zeuge von "psychologisch feinen" (d h völlig gequält verkünstelten) Dialogen, die ein Nix von Handlung versuchen zu umkleiden.
Stilistisch eine Mischung aus Hegel und Tschechow. Dazwischen wird auch mal gerne getrost aneinander vorbei geredet, was aber auch nur ein Pfeil unter vielen in James Köcher ist, die er gerne auf sein Romanpersonal losfeuert, um die ohnehin sehr bemühte Konversation zu erschweren.
Und auch den oft heraufbeschworenen Sprach-Rythmus hab ich ehrlich gesagt nicht gefunden / genossen.
James kriegt sicherlich noch eine Chance von mir, aber ich hoffe sehr, dass es noch sehr lange dauern wird, bis ich wieder mit seinem Spätwerk konfrontiert werde.
Vergesst Joyce!
Vergesst Woolf!
Vergesst Faulkner!
Mein Endgegner heißt Henry James.
500 Seiten später bin ich weder klüger, noch fühle ich mich auf irgendeine erdenkbare Weise bereicherter, als ich vor Beginn der Lektüre war.
James versteht es wirklich meisterhaft mit einer noch nie so gelesenen Akribie Belanglosigkeiten und Gemeinplätze mit literarischen Satzgirlanden auszukleiden, was irgendwie zur Folge hat, dass ich das Buch ehrlich gesagt noch nicht einmal für schlecht befinden kann.
Ja, ich halte es für ermüdend.
Ja, ich halte es für streckenweise unlesbar.
Und ja, ich glaube bei der Lektüre von James wird man vor allem seine Frustrationstoleranz mal ordentlich belasten können. Aber schlecht ist der Roman nicht.
Wirklich überzeugend ist er aber ebensowenig.
500 Seiten lang tritt man als Leser in Kontakt mit siluettenhaft umrissenen Charakteren und wird Zeuge von "psychologisch feinen" (d h völlig gequält verkünstelten) Dialogen, die ein Nix von Handlung versuchen zu umkleiden.
Stilistisch eine Mischung aus Hegel und Tschechow. Dazwischen wird auch mal gerne getrost aneinander vorbei geredet, was aber auch nur ein Pfeil unter vielen in James Köcher ist, die er gerne auf sein Romanpersonal losfeuert, um die ohnehin sehr bemühte Konversation zu erschweren.
Und auch den oft heraufbeschworenen Sprach-Rythmus hab ich ehrlich gesagt nicht gefunden / genossen.
James kriegt sicherlich noch eine Chance von mir, aber ich hoffe sehr, dass es noch sehr lange dauern wird, bis ich wieder mit seinem Spätwerk konfrontiert werde.
bibliohound1's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
louiza_read2live's review against another edition
4.0
Henry James has yet to disappoint me. I love his works (or at least the ones I have read so far). It is true that his writing style is often perplexing and difficult, but it is also beautiful! His work requires patience, but the readers will be highly rewarded. From the back cover: "One of the greatest of James's late works, The Ambassadors is a subtle and witty exploration of different American responses to a European environment." I enjoyed it a lot, but I normally love Henry James' work. However, it was very difficult to read because this is James' last novel and by that time, his writing had become as convoluted as can be. I wouldn't recommend it for a first time experience with Henry James. Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, or The Turn of the Screw are probably better places to start with Henry James.
tomleetang's review against another edition
3.0
I admire the intellect behind this novel: how what begins as a sketch of human nature is gradually elaborated into an elegant painting; the way characters try to apprehend (and often misapprehend) one another's personalities and intentions. What has perhaps always held Henry James fans spellbound is his commitment to psychological penetration.
HOWEVER, James is also quite possibly the most aggravating author when it comes to sentence structure. He is always so profuse with his words; his sentences are verbose and tangled; everything is dense to the verge of impenetrability. I know, I know, readability is by no means a necessity in modern fiction, but if someone wrote like this today most people would assume it was satire.
An interesting comparison for me is to Dickens, an author who is just as wordy but whose language sparkles and glitters. Reading James, by contrast, feels more like stumbling about in a fog, occasionally banging your shin on something sharp and pointed, before you totter back off into the fog.
HOWEVER, James is also quite possibly the most aggravating author when it comes to sentence structure. He is always so profuse with his words; his sentences are verbose and tangled; everything is dense to the verge of impenetrability. I know, I know, readability is by no means a necessity in modern fiction, but if someone wrote like this today most people would assume it was satire.
An interesting comparison for me is to Dickens, an author who is just as wordy but whose language sparkles and glitters. Reading James, by contrast, feels more like stumbling about in a fog, occasionally banging your shin on something sharp and pointed, before you totter back off into the fog.
danielshelsel's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
1.75