The Wings of the Dove
Beautiful Kate Croy may have been left penniless by her relatives, but her bold, ambitious nature ensures she will not succumb meekly to a life of poverty. If the financial circumstances of Merton Densher, the man she is passionately in love with, are not sufficient to secure her future, perhaps her cunning will. So when Milly Theale arrives in Europe from America, laden with wealth but also gravely ill, Kate sees an opportunity to exploit her vulnerability and devises a plan that will see her and Merton financially provided for. Her scheming is flawed though, for it fails to take into account the inconstancies of the human heart.John Bayley's introduction examines the novel in the context of James's other late, great works.
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What Hacker News says
- Other difficult books, in a somewhat increasing order of difficulty:
0) The autumn of the patriarch, by Marquez
1) Gormenghast series, by Mervyn Peake
2) The third period of Henry James (The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl).
3) The Death of Virgil, by Hermann Broch
I do suggest trying Gormenghast, it's an amazingly written fantasy series.
- Naughty you. I confess that a) I have never been able to fight my way through The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove, and that b) I can't imagine that life, let only leisure, is long enough for 140 volumes of Henry James's letter. Also, I wonder who in the world one would impress by reading them.
- The YA debate strikes me as somewhat orthogonal to what Scott was writing of. I must say that while I find middle and early James very readable, I have tried and failed more than once to read any distance into The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove.
