The Wings of a Dove

[Valerie]

Read Aug. 2019

If you are a big fan of Henry James, you should stop here…!


Goodness. I like words. I love reading. I also, apparently, like editors quite a bit. Henry James, however, strove to insert every word he could think of into this novel. I agree with another reviewer who suggested that if an editor had gotten a hold of this book it would shrink from 700+ to 250 pages!

Reading this was brutal. I have a fairly high tolerance for brutal – I read The Blazing World after all. However, I would say I stuck with book because it fulfills two challenges I am participating in and because I think it’s good to try at least one novel from the famous classic authors. This was my first and likely last Henry James.

I will say, I did find the story interesting. It was a lot more edgy than I expected. The ending was a little too “neatly tied with a bow”, but otherwise the story seemed credible for the time (for the upper classes). It’s for this reason I bumped it up to 2*

[Kristel]

Reason read: TBR takedown, Reading 1001, ROOT
This is a story of a love triangle of sorts. Milly Theale is a orphan, heiress. Merton Densher is a young man in love with Kate Croy but he doesn't have money. Kate Croy can't marry Merton because he has no money. Aunt Maud (Kate's) wants Kate to marry Lord Mark because he has money. Henry James, an American author, likes to pitch his 'American' characters as innocent against the wiles of the Europeans. The book also depicts the constraints placed on females by society.The Dove is a major theme in the book. The dove being Milly. "...which was only dove-like only so far as one remembered that doves have wings and wondrous flights, have them as well as tender tints and soft sounds. It even came to him dimly that such wings could in a given case--had, truly, in the case which he was concerned--spread themselves for protection." So basically the story revolves around the two that can't marry for lack of money and the innocent, dove, who has the money. This example also displays how "wordy" the author is. It took awhile for me to finally get this read (On my shelf since 2016) and I did it by adding audio along with the book.