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Title: Dazzling Psychodrama
Review: The great power of Henry James's work is that he is intensely compassionate and unwaveringly tough-minded; he creates complex and dimensional characters and allows them to make the worst choices possible. Best of all, he doesn't lapse into melodrama or let his characters off the hook for their lapses in character or judgement. That's the beauty of his work; instead of a cheap redemptive payoff, he shows the range of human experience, woven into a tantalizing and totally involving narrative. Isabel Archer is charming, irritating, self involved, charismatic, and tragically shortsighted. Her fate is all the more tragic because James allows us to travel the entire, rapturous distance with her, signalling the bloom of every camellia, kiss, or withering blow to the spirit.
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