Years ago, I read somewhere, perhaps in Graves' Goodbye to All of That, or a biography on Ford Madox Ford, where it was recorded (a tricky word if it's Graves) that Ford, while out in the trenches, read and greatly admired Henry James' What Maisie Knew. What stuck in my mind was the fact that Ford (as I remember it) thought it a great treatment of evil and children. Ford, a quirky but fine critic, could be a critical bear when it came to James, so the fact that he singled this novel out for prai More...

When I saw that this book was about a young girl whose parents divorce and both remarry, and how she is shuttled between the various adults that have some reponsibility for her, I wondered why it wasn't in the Ultimate Teen Book Guide in place of 'Daisy Miller'. But the reason for that became clear as soon as I started reading it.

The language is very difficult, with sentences that go on for line after line without ever arriving at an obvious meaning. I was often getting to the end of a paragrap More...

Well, I told myself to review more of my 5 star books instead of taking the easy way out projectile sneering at some grisly two star efforts. but it's hard. There are some brilliant Henry James reviews dotted around, and this won't be one of those. I think there's a point in some of these long, long literary careers (it's true of long musical careers too) where you've followed the writer out of the early period into the majestic middle period and you know the late period is going to give you a m More...

Try as I might, I just couldn't get into what I thought was going to be right up my alley. I blame that partly on circumstances -- I do much of my reading on the subway, and you just can't read James like that: a short trip alone will get you through a mere paragraph which you'll have gone over three or four times trying to even comprehend. So yes, I'll give James another chance when I can read him under more favorable conditions, but I also find his style needlessly cumbersome and obscure rathe More...

Club Read

Purely from the perspective of plot mechanics, 'What Maisie Knew' centers on the plight of an innocent girl and her mute pain and confusion suffered at the hands of the parents and their surrogates. In conversational exchanges throughout the novel, James stages the young Maisie interacting with the Beales, Ida and the weak Sir Claude, contrasting the heartful earnest qualities of the young girl with the calculating, self-involved motives of the conceited adults. When Maisie expresses th More...

It's interesting how literature changes through the ages - the structure and meat of the stories can all probably be pegged into various eras by how they're written. So I did find this one a wee bit of a slog to get through. Not that the content was hard to understand - it was well put out. No - it was the structure of the language that I found -for the lack of a better word- difficult. Often jumbled and sentences very complex - you really had to read slowly - or reread entirely - sentences, so More...

Правдив портрет на английското общество и нравите му в края на 19-ти век и история на бързото и болезнено съзряване на едно дете - това е накратко "Какво знаеше Мейзи", към която подходих с много големи очаквания. И може би щяха да се оправдаят, ако книгата беше събрана в максимум половината от сегашния си обем.
Мейзи е момиченце с открадното от възрастните детство, използвано вместо разменна монета, средство за изкупление, оръжие за саморазправа, отмъщение и постигане на цели. Непрекъснато прехв More...

What Maisie Knew tells the story of a child subject to a vicious custody dispute between her parents in 1890s London. Family law dictates she is to be 'halved' between them and thus begins Maisie's life as the pawn in her parents' power struggle.

I think this would have to be a must-read for anyone with an interest in child psychology. I found little Maisie's struggle to understand the convoluted world of adult relationships into which she has been prematurely thrust quite touching, despite the v More...

Henry James's novel is about the plight of Maisie, a child caught up in the bitterness and ongoing battles between and among her parents, stepparents and governess. Her parents are Ida and Beale Farange. At the beginning of the novel they are in the midst of a bitter divorce. They fight over custody of Maisie, not because either of them loves or really wants her, but to deprive the other of something, to prove that they are the better half of the now separated couple. Both parents take up with n More...

Thought I was over a mild obsession with Henry James, but not so much. Having bumped into the Toronto Film Festival and a movie adaptation of What Maisie Knew, I got the book. And was transported back to college and my infatuation with James and his marvelous voyeuristic peerings into emotional (sexual) repression. Freud was obsessed with it. James as well. I thought Turn of the Screw was the best example before today. Oh blimey, that marvelous scene when The Governess first conjures Peter Quint More...

My first encounter with James and it took me a while to get into the rhythm of his prose. It is a heck of an achievement to see the fallout of a dysfunctional amoral couple as visited on their only offspring through her eyes, an achievement made all the more great by the complications, all too prevalent at this time, indeed in any period, caused by society's demands and the necessity of having the financial wherewithal to live with as much propriety as one would wish. That sentance is indicative More...

Henry James has a complicated style of prose so this book can get a little heavy at times. I found I either had to carefully read the text, or simply really strain to understand if I chose to read at a faster rate. This is the kind of book that I feel I could re read another three times and get an entirely different story out of. So much is left up to innuendo, interpretation, and ambiguity (which are all kind of the same)that you really are reading the story you want to read. Of course being fa More...

First of all, the title of this novel is particularly appropriate.

Maisie is a wise child who notices and understands everything that is going on with the adults around her. The grown-ups in the novel, particularly her parents, treat her as if Maisie is-not exactly stupid-but a nonentity.

This is, in fact, one of those rare novels about a main character who everyone else places in a corner and ignores, yet is able to control most of what is going on through the advantage of being invisible. This More...

A beautiful book, even if it portraits something as dark as a child's perspective of divorce, you get transported into this vortex around Maisie that somehow, personally, affects her spirit very little. Sure she jumps around, exchanges guardians and most of the time can but barely understand what is happening, but she doesn't worry. Maisie has that belief that everything will turn out all right and all she has to do is keep the peace and give the right answers (she would give quite the politicia More...

Finally, a good use of James's unwillingness to say anything outright. How could you say everything in front of a child? And how much could she understand anyway? Lots of people have sex in these books, but it's all about the fallout and machinations and hurt feelings and none of the pleasure. Maisie's parents are so much more interesting than Sir Claude or Mrs. Beale, but they work better as minor characters. And the scene when Maisie's father basically forces her to take responsibility for a c More...

During my tenure as a student at the university, I read my fair share of 19th century authors. While the 19th century was not my favorite time period—I took as many medieval literature classes as I could and devoured Viking/Icelandic sagas—Henry James was one of the authors that kept reoccurring. Many of my professors liked his work; however, without fail, we would always read Daisy Miller. So, even while I had a little experience with James, I never had the chance to read one of his novels. Whe More...

I recommend this book to anyone who cares about the craft of novel writing--or the ability of a middle-aged man to imagine himself as a young girl.

I learned that James is brilliant. Maise has the hots for Sir Claude. And most parents are as awful as we always imagined them to be when we were children.

James, Henry. What Maisie Knew. 8 CDs. AudioGO. ISBN 9780792789901.

Henry James’ classic work, What Maisie Knew, explores the confusion, heartbreak, and despair that follow divorce through a young girl’s eyes at the turn of the century. Maisie is used as nothing more than a pawn between her spiteful parents and as she matures she begins to realize it. She vainly tries to find a trustworthy adult guardian to look up to, but despite all the adults, governesses, and new spouses in her life she keep More...

A difficult novel to read if you are used to the novels of this century and breezing through them. This book will have you reading slower and re-reading things to make sure you understand what is being said. A rewarding adventure in spectacular use of the English language from a time so different than ours, be patient with it.
Interestingly, this book is about a divorce and use of a child as a weapon between dueling spouses... a scene more real today than it surely was when this was written, yet More...

I really disliked this book.

I couldn't really figure out what was going on until I re-read the passages again and again. When I was just about into the last chapter, I found that my book had synopses of each chapter. I wish I had found it at when I began reading it so I would have had a context of the direction of the novel. It made me feel stupid that in effect I needed the "cliff notes" to have enough continuity to follow the story clearly.

That being said, I assume James wrote it in innuendo More...

How exactly does he do it? How does Henry James take weak-willed, deeply flawed people and make me root for them, even knowing that he never, NEVER redeems them in any wholly satisfying way? James's characterization--his strength always--is just as strong here as it always is. His usually long-winded but completely on-point skill at depicting the intricacies of human behavior is also beautifully accomplished here. The biggest plus? It's short, which means there's little time for the gelatinous w More...

Next time I feel the need to procrastinate, I'll google scientific research on papers on procrastination, and wonder about how much time the writers spent procrastinating while doing their research.

Moving on...What Maisie Knew. The humour was sharp and satirical, and while I haven't read Henry James' other works, I can easily believe how nothing else could top this. Although I do often wonder, is Maisie really that naive? I don't think so. Granted that she doesn't always grasp the subtext, there More...

This was my first experience with James, and I must say that I am intrigued. James is meticulous in creating Maisie's point of view, though in somewhat of an odd way. His description of what runs through Maisie's mind never deviates from what I would see as Maisie, but it is still very much James describing. It almost feels like a funnel, this wider perspective shedding light into this narrower perspective. Yet, he never abuses this and widens the narrow perspective by viewing it with the wider. More...

I think I would have hated this book if I had simply tried to read it; the language is impossibly dense and unnecessarily wordy more often than not. But I listened to it instead and found an appreciation for it. There were laugh-out-loud funny moments and some incredibly sad moments I found myself following on the page just to get the most of the experience. It was incredibly soap opera-esque, but that just intrigued me more than anything. What does a 19th century soap opera look like? Clearly t More...

Phew...that was a slog. In the end there were some redeeming moments and phrases, but mostly I found this book to be a muddy march through uninteresting characters, ill-drawn events, and completely impenetrable prose. I've read James before, and enjoyed it; I do not remember the utter lack of clarity displayed in this novel from his other works. I realize that times change, styles change, blahdy blah, but as an editor, I would have made James pay me a dime for every unnecessary comma, every pare More...

I first read this in college, when I was probably too young to appreciate it. Picked it up again because they're making a movie version, set in the present, and was wondering how it would work (honestly, was thinking: how could you update Henry James-the sensibility doesn't translate to our speedy times). The storyline is timeless--a young girl, being used as a weapon in a war between her divorced parents, gains knowledge of how the adult world works--so it might work. Still, the emphasis on the More...

An only child of divorced parents is passed around among half a dozen adults of varying relationships to her (nannies, parents' new lovers, second spouses), all of whom are unfailingly selfish and incapable of framing her well-being in any terms other than what suits them. Admittedly anyone in the world who claims to be acting in a purely disinterested manner on any occasion is probably not telling the truth but this presents a notably pessimistic view of human nature. Written in 1897, close to More...

This was my second time through this gem; I can't possibly have appreciated it the first time! James was way ahead of his time in examining the fate of Maisie, whose parents are divorced. The greatest triumph of the book is the delicate and perfectly done consciousness of Maisie as she shapes herself to survive her unusual circumstances and grows in understanding of what is in fact going on around her. To fully appreciate what transpires it would be well to keep in mind the scandal that attached More...

Very strange book. What's James doing associating with people like this? But some memorable characters -- Mrs Wix, Sir Claude, Mrs Beale; even those barely seen, like the countess and the captain. And thn the sccene-setting: Boulogne, Folkstone... a novel told in a series of conversations and arguments in each of which Maisie's comprehension grows further; she stand as a James, I think, and the dynamics among the politics of the thought-processes of the varoius contenders reveals and build the c More...

This is the third novel by Henry James that I've read. I was curious about this novel because of the adaptation coming out starring Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgård.

I remember focusing a lot on the parenting in James' Daisy Miller but here it is the theme of the novel. Poor Maisie is treated merely as a bargaining chip in her parents' very bitter divorce, carted between their places and being told all sorts of things by both parents as a way of getting back at the other. Maisie's parents a More...