The prose of this book is almost impenetrable. Sometimes Shakespeare seems hard to figure out, but there are whole pages of this book that are almost written in a different language-- or at least a different syntax. Henry James has the ability to write 10 pages at a time using only 5 paragraphs, 10 periods, 50 semi-colons, no dialogue, and the only nouns are pronouns.

At best though, the sentences can be beautiful and intricate and reading them can be like unwinding a strand of DNA. There's a logic to it.

James' writing style matches the content. Because like the sentences and the paragraphs, the characters, social setting, and culture of this book are at times completely confounding. Even though this book is written about English and Americans at the turn of the century, sometimes it feels like the book is about space aliens a thousand years from now. It's like sci-fi. I probably have more in common with the worm people of Dune than I do with the Upper society of England.

So if you treat this book like a fantasy or sci-fi it's almost finishable. It would be completely finishable if instead of being 700 pages it was 402 pages. Then I could say I had actually finished the book. But I read the last 2 pages, and even though I skipped the previous 300, the ending made complete sense to me. I'm sure that's a credit to Henry James.

On a personal note, this book was like a roadblock for me. I was on a streak of reading like a book every other day. But this book just messed everything up. It was good enough to make me want to not return it to the library, but not good enough to make me want to actually read it. Weird. So I just ended up reading nothing for a week or two. But I "finished" it and I'm moving on. Even though "We shall never be again as we were!"