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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very slow plot until the end. But, the last chapter or so was FINALLY interesting!! If the rest if the book had been like the ending, I would have loved it.
4.5 stars for everything but the last page. The last page gets a negative million stars for ripping my heart out and crushing it into dust.
I'm only half kidding. This is a great story and one that will keep you captivated until the end. (Where, if you're anything like me, you'll end up laying on the floor at midnight asking yourself "Why????" while crying. Enjoy.)
I'm only half kidding. This is a great story and one that will keep you captivated until the end. (Where, if you're anything like me, you'll end up laying on the floor at midnight asking yourself "Why????" while crying. Enjoy.)
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
ralph touchett is one of the best male characters to ever exist
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have read the first two chapters of this book no less than 5 times. Every year in college, there would be some Saturday evening where, for one reason or another, I would not want to hang out with other people. I would go down to the cafe, buy some pizza, grab Portrait of a Lady and starting reading. The first year it was a random choice. The second year, I wanted to read more of it and never got past rereading the first chapters. After that, it was just tradition.
After years of being charmed by the first couple chapters of the book, I was quite disappointed. This is through no fault of the book itself. The plot was excellent and James can present characters vividly enough that you feel like you know them (and, generally, would not really like them). What bugged me was the way the book was paced. James would spend a chapter describing a single conversation in all of its detail and then skip ahead two years and tell us that in the intervening time someone had been married, had and lost a child, and become miserable. It just bugged me. However, I am glad I finally read Portrait of a Lady; it was engaging, and I have not been reading enough books by dead people lately anyway.
After years of being charmed by the first couple chapters of the book, I was quite disappointed. This is through no fault of the book itself. The plot was excellent and James can present characters vividly enough that you feel like you know them (and, generally, would not really like them). What bugged me was the way the book was paced. James would spend a chapter describing a single conversation in all of its detail and then skip ahead two years and tell us that in the intervening time someone had been married, had and lost a child, and become miserable. It just bugged me. However, I am glad I finally read Portrait of a Lady; it was engaging, and I have not been reading enough books by dead people lately anyway.
This is a compelling story and the writing is so poetic. I just love James’s imaginative metaphors. Isabel Archer is one of the great protagonists of literature.
"My dear girl, I can't tell you how life seems to stretch there before us -- what a long summer afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day -- with a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life, and which you love to-day."
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character