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A review by teresatumminello
Confidence by Henry James
2.0
2.5
There’s a reason I knew nothing much of this short novel, a sort of comedy of manners, beforehand: it’s not that good.
It starts off okay, with different meanings of the title word interspersed within its pages, plus a very tiny glimpse for me into perhaps the beginnings of his [b:The Beast in the Jungle|517570|The Beast in the Jungle|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348051678s/517570.jpg|1808874]. But the characters of the two men are twisted to fit the theme, and the inscrutable nature of Angela Vivian (Living Angel!) and the speech of the other member of the love-rectangle turn rather tedious.
Whether it’s intentional or not, and though James' occasional first-person narrator has a statement about women that I find completely wrong and a narratorial usage of I say that makes no sense, the work does point out the unrealistic expectations men have of women.
There’s a reason I knew nothing much of this short novel, a sort of comedy of manners, beforehand: it’s not that good.
It starts off okay, with different meanings of the title word interspersed within its pages, plus a very tiny glimpse for me into perhaps the beginnings of his [b:The Beast in the Jungle|517570|The Beast in the Jungle|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348051678s/517570.jpg|1808874]. But the characters of the two men are twisted to fit the theme, and the inscrutable nature of Angela Vivian (Living Angel!) and the speech of the other member of the love-rectangle turn rather tedious.
Whether it’s intentional or not, and though James' occasional first-person narrator has a statement about women that I find completely wrong and a narratorial usage of I say that makes no sense, the work does point out the unrealistic expectations men have of women.