Prickle’s Reviews > The Portrait of a Lady > Status Update
Prickle
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Really surprised at how dark this book is and how it’s almost the opposite of a Dickens novel. Everything’s painted in bright and colorful shades at first until the shadows gradually lengthen to make a canvas of an inescapable blackness. And because everything’s so subtle in this book, the drama is ironically heightened. To say James just writes for pompous aristocrats is to grossly misrepresent his talent.
— Nov 11, 2021 06:29PM
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Perrystroika
(last edited Nov 14, 2021 01:44PM)
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Nov 12, 2021 06:03AM
I like James' short fiction, especially his short novels, the best, The Beast in the Jungle, Turn of the Screw, Washington Square. I remember trying to read Portrait and getting to page 150ish, before realizing that the plot hadn't actually gotten started yet. I didn't mind Daisy as a character, but I didn't find her nearly as charming as James, who loves her so much he can just go on and on about her, like a cherished crush.
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Perrystroika wrote: "I like James' short fiction, especially his short novels, the best, The Beast in the Jungle, Turn of the Screw, Washington Square. I remember trying to read Portrait and getting to page, before rea..."Luckily for me I had ceased to care too much about plot in fiction after I found myself sometimes enjoying Hugo's lengthy plot-less digressions in Les Misérables more than the actual story. It was this same perverse propensity I think that allowed me to enjoy Huysmans's À rebours and like the entire second part of The Man Without Qualities (which takes "nothing happens" to an unbeatable 500+ page climax) at all, which would likely have anesthetized a normal person.
