An incredibly well-written, engrossing and provocative story about a woman's choices in love, friendship, marriage and duty. Isabel transitions from one who prized freedom above all else, and this is precisely what she ultimately gives up to instead fulfill the appearance of a happy marriage

I thought the value of this book lied not in its story (it was forgettable), but as a sort of cultural museum, allowing one to look into what English "high society" was like at the end of the 19th century.

What it was, I found, was horribly superficial and empty. These people had little to do with their time except gather at eachother's parlours and chat idlely and endlessly. But with nothing to talk about and all day to talk about it, it was considered better to sound "clever" than to have something meaningful to say; style was valued in the absense of substance. No one said what they felt, no one felt strongly about what they said, and the whole frustrating lot of them came across as a bunch of phonies. They were all but toppling over with the weight of their own pretensions.

The reason I found this frustrating, though, is that in his other works I have read (admittedly not that many), the reward for struggling through James' prose is his deeply penetrating understanding of human nature; clearly, James "gets" people, and it shows in his sharp observation and subtle wit. So that made me struggle all the more to peel back the layers of clever chatter to "get" what James was driving at, but after I turned the final unfathomable page, all I could say was "huh?"

Critics will often pair this novel with his earlier "What Maisie Knew."

Both novels deal with the child's / adolescent's emerging conscience, while faced with adult corruption.

In "Maisie" and "Awkward," we see James following up on his fascination with Hawthornian themes.

James's facility with dialogue, in which abrupt blushes are loaded with meaning, is apparent here. The drawing-room conversations reminded me of a party in a swimming pool; each character is constantly, in a conversational sense, "taking a plunge and coming up somewhere else."

I found this novel somewhat thin - read closely James's "Preface to the New York Edition"; can you hear James in self-defense mode?

Overall, not bad, but "Maisie's" somber and gloomy tone was better suited to the subject matter and themes than the "light and ironic" touch of "Awkward."

This novel tells a familiar tale: old-fashioned man enters a tangled web of wealthy British fashionable types, makes a proposal, and the web falls apart. Mr. Longdon, a wealthy old man from Suffolk, returns to London to find the children and grandchildren of his ancient love. Out of respect for this unspoiled affection, he takes an interest in the grand-daughter of his love and tries to pull her out of the circle of influence that has, effectively, soiled her. James manages some interesting and convincing characters, and these pawns interact in some magnificent scenes. It almost reminds me of Restoration Comedy, with its complicated dialogue and dramatic jumps in setting that resemble staged scenes. The major thread of the novel is the relationship between Vanderbank, a complicated but good-natured young man who has managed to penetrate that affluent circle, and Nanda Brookenham, the granddaughter of Longdon's lost love. Vanderbank remains deliciously puzzling to the end of the novel, and Nanda manages a kind of heroism. The conclusion is somewhat surprising; James, by this point in his career, seems to have moved beyond the endorsement of conservative values evident in a work like The Bostonians. Despite the surprise, though, it was a great deal of fun getting to that conclusion. This novel is as close to a page-turner as I have read from James thus far, and bristles with subtle interrogation of a rotting social structure. I have no trouble saying, like F.R. Leavis, that this novel ranks among James's best.