Pa's review
The American by Henry James
Definitely not one of Henry James' best novels but it is still a great pleasure to read. It tells a tale of an innocent, naive' but essentially good-natured American businessman venturing to Europe, falling in love and finding himself defeated in an ambitious attempt to marry a beautiful French woman of blue-blooded aristocracy. In a sense, it's a romance novel, but the book brims with irony and comedy. In the novel, the material self-satisfaction of the American came to crash with the polished wickedness of the Europeans so pround of their traditions. Although the American possesses some characteristics that I do not like about America (i.e., the pleasure and satisfaction drawn from wealth and success coupled with the failure to grasp deeper human values), I came to be sympathetic with him at the end when he was labeled as "a commercial person," and though he had every reason to take revenge against the family of the woman he loved, his basic goodness stopped him just ri...more
My favorite James is The Bostonians. Read it in college and could not put it down.
I haven't read the Bostonians but will add it to my to-read list. I loved all of H. James novels, esp. the Portrait of a Lady and Wings of the Dove.
