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A review by lee_foust
Confidence by Henry James
4.0
Installment number six of my reading Henry James's novels in chronological order.
This, I must admit, was a work of James's that I'd never heard of nor seen a copy. I had to download the ebook from Project Gutenberg. And I'm quite glad both that I've begun this project which precipitated reading this novel I might otherwise never have stumbled upon. Although too lighthearted perhaps and mainly clever to be a masterpiece in the opinion of this tragedy and complexity lover of post-romantic and experimental fiction, it's actually quite charming and in an original and very Jamesian way.
Once again we have a protagonist who governs the narrative's point of view as I've noted in each of James's novels up to this one, but here the narrative manages to exploit that a bit better than in the others, cleverly concealing the revelations of truth behind a series of ignorances and mistaken assumptions all to the proof of the statement, made more than once by our heroine, that "Men are very stupid."
Of course, in regards to matters of the heart, she's not wrong. Not only does our protagonist, Bernard, misunderstand all of the other characters feelings, it takes him three years and two thirds of the novel to discover about his own, which are pretty obvious to the reader from the opening chapter. I know that sounds tedious, but James's style of close examination and thoughtful explanation kind of pull it off. The style might be a tad much for a tale this light--even if it's implications regarding male and female emotional insight and interpretations of behavior are quite welcome--but overall I was rather pleased with it. Perhaps to make up for the horribly vacuous but popular Daisy Miller character, James sought to give us a very wise woman in the person of Angela Vivian. I, for one, was in love with her from the very first page of the novel, which scene was very vivid for me as it takes place in Siena, a city where I once lived for a summer and have visited many times.
This, I must admit, was a work of James's that I'd never heard of nor seen a copy. I had to download the ebook from Project Gutenberg. And I'm quite glad both that I've begun this project which precipitated reading this novel I might otherwise never have stumbled upon. Although too lighthearted perhaps and mainly clever to be a masterpiece in the opinion of this tragedy and complexity lover of post-romantic and experimental fiction, it's actually quite charming and in an original and very Jamesian way.
Once again we have a protagonist who governs the narrative's point of view as I've noted in each of James's novels up to this one, but here the narrative manages to exploit that a bit better than in the others, cleverly concealing the revelations of truth behind a series of ignorances and mistaken assumptions all to the proof of the statement, made more than once by our heroine, that "Men are very stupid."
Of course, in regards to matters of the heart, she's not wrong. Not only does our protagonist, Bernard, misunderstand all of the other characters feelings, it takes him three years and two thirds of the novel to discover about his own, which are pretty obvious to the reader from the opening chapter. I know that sounds tedious, but James's style of close examination and thoughtful explanation kind of pull it off. The style might be a tad much for a tale this light--even if it's implications regarding male and female emotional insight and interpretations of behavior are quite welcome--but overall I was rather pleased with it. Perhaps to make up for the horribly vacuous but popular Daisy Miller character, James sought to give us a very wise woman in the person of Angela Vivian. I, for one, was in love with her from the very first page of the novel, which scene was very vivid for me as it takes place in Siena, a city where I once lived for a summer and have visited many times.