should i continue reading this book?

[Niamh]

I started to read this book a few weeks back but i'm just not getting into it. I'm really not enjoying at at all. I'm wondering if it will get good eventually or if i should just give up now. Its the first Henry James I've read and i'd wanted to read something by him for a while but this has left me thinking.
Have i chosen perhaps one of his not so good books to start off with or are they basicly a similar style and i should find greener pastures elsewhere?
Help!

[ornithorhynchus]

I'm reading it at present and have made it to Chapter 24 and am determined to finish. You sound like a young person, so maybe you should put it aside until you are in your seventies or eighties. By then you should be able to look back and realise that HJ knew more about child psychology than any of the psychologists yet to emerge. And yes, there are others that are much easier reads.

[Niamh]

I'm more of less in my mid to late twenties now, and something about the book is not going to make me pick it up when i'm in my seventies. Especially seeing as there are so many better books out there i can spend my time reading.

[ladymacbeth]

If I were you I would start with The Turn of the Screw, The American, or Portrait of a Lady. Don't get too discouraged and give up on James. He is an amazing writer just difficult at times.

[Bitterfly]

I didn't like that book either, but it's not at all characteristic of Henry James. I loved all the other novels I read by him (and I've read quite a few). If I were you, I would start with a short, easy one like Washington Square, which I found far more enjoyable than The turn of the Screw.

[Niamh]

thank you for your suggestions. I'll keep them in mind.

[joseph90ie]

With fiction, unless I was getting paid to read, which has never been the case, I give a book between 20 and 50 pages. Sometimes you can know sooner, there can be an instant antagonism; other times, you straight away see that this is the author for you: love at first sight, there is a chemistry, you click with the author's way of seeing things. If you're wondering and wondering over a period of pages, don't ignore your doubt, simply put the book down; is that not what your doubt is telling you? Is that not a case of reading out of peer pressure, because the book has a good intellectual reputation and so, if you give up reading it, it calls into question your own intelligence? What can one say to that? Have more respect for your mind. Books are to be enjoyed, otherwise you'll come to dread them. How do I know this? Because I have often, still do, dread them; I have been weak enough, still am, to bow to peer pressure. How mistaken is this, with our one and only life?; and how wasteful, since all that misspent time could have been used to locate the ones that give pleasure, and yet are no less challenging and edifying?

The pontificators will say my point leads to a slippery slope, where you'll become impatient and undisciplined, you'll start putting down books right, left, and centre; that your attention span will fold-up and you'll become flippant and flighty, incapable of reading beyond aphorism-length literature. This is simply answered: you're an experienced reader; trust your committment to, judgement of, and genuine concern about quality literature!!

[joseph90ie]

...and also, the way we judge whether or not to stay the course when reading a book should be judged no differently to anything else we decide as to whether it interests us or not. For example, when we meet people in a pub and become acquainted with their outlook and way of talking and behaving, do we spend our entire night chatting to them, wondering if we should seek out other company? Or do we go with our unerring instinct? Always we go with our instincts, which is a brave decision, because it's a decision you've to take alone; it requires the exercise of independent judgement, which always has to be done out in the cold, apart from the flock, which has zilch capacity to inform.

Why, then, does it take us longer to learn this common-sense behaviour regarding books? Because snobbery, elitism, sanctity - you name it - has got a firmer hold in this area. And why is that? Because knowledge is influential - not as precious as money, but still containing profitable potential - so you'll have people, educational institutions, trying to inappropriately encroach on your mind, your own property for which you are solely reponsible, so don't hand it over to anybody: they'll deforest a wild region and till it to barrenness for their own purposes.

[joseph90ie]

Be warned, I tell myself: if you read a book to the end without having really enjoyed it, all you have done is please the author. If you force-feed yourself knowledge, you learn nothing; you unlearn, plant weeds, and in fact deaden yourself by neglecting to tend to your happier parts. After all that, I'm still weak; still I go on reading stuff I should let alone. The inner sheep is as stubborn as a mule; fear requires constant smothering - it has the lungs of a whale. It's like trying to crush in your arms an already inflated bouncy castle.

[Niamh]

Cheers for that joseph!!! Its very rare for me to not continue a book but...i wont be picking this one back up.

[afhtas]

I have the book tape read by Maureen O Brian . I suggest this is a wonderful way to "read" . I am an artist and have quite a few tasks that are rather boring so to read at the same time is delightful .This method really brings the book to life .I have listened many times to this particular book and find it very funny and and so clever .. just the ideas of a child .

[kelby_lake]

I really liked the book, actually. There isn't much of a plot, it's more of a study, but it was still interesting.

James seems to have taken events and news that he heard and then create the story almost as a kind of study of that idea. What Maisie Knew was inspired by James hearing about a divorced couple who shared custody of their daughter, each having her for 6 months. Presumable this was relatively rare in the 1890's.

[Gladys]

I'm wondering if it will get good eventually or if i should just give up now. Its the first Henry James I've read and i'd wanted to read something by him for a while but this has left me thinking.

Have i chosen perhaps one of his not so good books to start off with or are they basically a similar style and i should find greener pastures elsewhere?
Help!

I have just finished What Maisie Knew: a short and racy novel with as much punch as Pride and Prejudice, and for much the same reasons. I found myself endlessly laughing at this parody of Victorian morals while weeping at the pillar-to-post plight of poor Maisie. I was captivated by What Maisie Knew as much as any of the dozen Henry James novels I've read and loved in the past year or so. And a couple I've actually disliked.

Nevertheless, in this 1897 novel, James' is already writing in the complex, sometimes tortuous, style of three great, late novels of 1902-04. You never know where a sentence is going 'til its last clause! Tackling the the late novels is far more difficult than reading The Europeans (1878), Washington Square (1880) or The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and one reads at half-speed.

Unusually for James, What Maisie Knew held me from the very start, and the ending was clever. My next read is The Awkward Age (1899) - I love Henry James.