The Golden Bowl

The best!

The Golden Bowl is one of Henry James' most complicated and enthralling novels. Juliet Stevenson is without doubt one of the best readers you can find on audible. The combination made me appreciate the subtleties of this work I had missed while reading it on the page.

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If you don't love this book, it's your fault

Only the Master can make oceans drift the boat from one coast to the other and back between reflective pauses on the resonant meanings of a single phrase. A masterpiece of polyphonic, polysemic writing...and it penetrates the heart if you lend it the patience to show its grace. A guide to endurance through the darkness beseting all the phases in love's uncertain journey until at last the fruit of patience, the fruit of trust and forgiveness can make a shoddy purchase gleam as gold, make a heart of glass gain color.

Juliet Stephenson is to the audiobook what Shakespeare is to verse...synonymous with acme.

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Endless Talk

Hundreds of pages of people speaking in beautiful prose and evocative metaphors--without ever saying what they mean. Several times my phone skipped me to elsewhere in the story and it took a half-hour to find my place in the endless dialog. Juliet Stevenson did her best with a masterful narration (although she can't quite do an authentic American accent). I listened to the whole book mostly for the music in her voice. Next up I'll look for a story where something happens.

Top notch narration

Henry James is never easy to follow, but Juliet Stevenson’s narration is nothing short of amazing in this book.

Too many words

I've been trying to read the classics over the last few years. I've found 19th century writers away over blown. What can be said in a couple of sentences is covered in paragraphs. James is the worst. I wouldn't be surprised if he forgot what he started to say by the end of events and insights. I certainly did. I've enjoyed George Elliott despite her long insights.And of course Jane Austen and Dickens are wonderful. I love Theodore Dreiser. So I do give these older writers credit for a job well done .After A Portrait of a Lady I would not have given James a second chance but since it A Golden Bowl was read by the great and incomparable Juliet Stevenson I gave it a go. Even she can't save ,what is probably a good story, from being a bore. Glad I got that off my chest. I seem to be as long winded as some authors

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The Golden Bore

This is the third Henry James novel I have endured in the last year only because the contributors of the Modern Library Top 100 insisted they were great works. After a trio of rather torturous tedium, I can scarcely believe there is one more on the list to tackle.

I sincerely don't understand James' acclaim. In none of the three books have I encountered one character worthy of my attention, sympathy or adoration. Perhaps it's because all of James' characters are the idle rich sitting around in drawing rooms excruciatingly over-analyzing every word and facial expression as if life and death depended on it. The army of servants, butlers, cooks and footmen who make their idle self indulgence possible aren't any more significant than the potted plants and wallpaper that adorn these much too sumptuous rooms and terraces where these empty lives play out.

Every writer has crutches but James never misses an opportunity for one of his characters to "hang fire" or offer a youthful or American cliche as if explaining the phrase to a conference room full of anthropologists. Being British American of a luminous family no doubt gave James countless hours in such drawing rooms and, perhaps to these turn of the century narcissists and the people who fantasize being of the gilded set, his books offer delicious indulgence.

Too me, they're just terribly boring.

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