Josh's Reviews > The Golden Bowl

This is possibly one of the most tedious, overwrought books I have ever read. On that negative note, I have enjoyed other books by Henry James, mainly The Portrait of a Lady, which was actually quite good. It appears that his late works, The Golden Bowl, Wings of the Dove etc, are in his most annoying, self-indulgent style, and most of them are practically unreadable.
And this book is indeed unreadable. Henry James style is overly wordy and verbose, his sentences go on for paragraphs. I found myself having to stop reading in the middle of a sentence just to keep track of what he was saying. This book is so wordy that it took me several months to finish it, and several times I found myself angrily throwing this book against the wall. How can anyone endure this? I have read other author's who are very wordy, such as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, but never have I encountered writing so painfully excruciating.
The plot isn't very interesting either for that matter, there's very little action in this book, and it seemed that James liked to "suggest" rather than describe actions or a scene, which doesn't work very well when your writing style is like verbal diarrhea. What sounds like an interesting plot, adultery and intrigue, come off like hot air in Henry James writing style.
I was really looking forward to reading more Henry James after The Portrait of a Lady, but this book ruined him for me. I can safely say I probably will never read any more Henry James again, thanks to this book. And as far as this book, consider yourself warned..