Desert Heat

Fun story and doesn’t drag. Also liked the two readers

I wanted a less flouncy romance, a fun ride, but instead I got a book that unnecessarily exaggerates some of the unhealthiest ways to start off a relationship.

If I could give it zero stars I would. Love bombing. Manipulation.

“After only one date I needed to lock this down.”

“You’ll be the only woman I spend time with in my free time, and I’m the only man you spend time with in your free time”

Unhealthiest start to a relationship. Instead of fun, I just got content that reinforces misogynistic relationship culture. Controlling your partner, getting panicked and jealous after one date when your “love” just has to share a stage kiss as part of her JOB which she LOVES and fulfills her. Barf. “I’ll avoid seeing her show and someone else’s lips on hers was out of the question” barf. “Now I have to come up with excuses for not coming to her shows”

And the FMC did not respect her own boundaries. MMC did not respect her boundaries.

MMC SLUT SHAMES his best friend’s baby mama.

Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carri?re van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.

Fun if frustrating because in a way it represents so much that is repressed [in all of us]. Also about sublimation. Venice.

This well-researched but still speculative contemplation of the life and writings of Henry James was fascinating to me. Toibin meticulously painted a portrait of a reflective man who relished his undisturbed life. The author integrated the influences of life on art showing how James incorporated his astute observations in his creative process. The Master was an excellent character study utilizing flashbacks and bittersweet vignettes to reveal the inner life of a conflicted author.This is a book to be real slowly and savored. Highly recommended to lovers of literature.

It's hard to like a book that has such an unpleasant protagonist. What's up with all the speed dating, ugly people shaming? Not to mention all that jealousy?! I would have broken up with him a long time ago. Glad it's over

I read this after finishing The Portrait of A Lady, and in addition to being a great read, it helped me understand that novel.

Beautifully written novel about a segment of the life of author Henry James (1843 – 1916). It is set in 1895 to 1899, looking back on key episodes and people in his life. We gain a perspective on his family, particularly his relationship with his parents, older brother William, and younger sister Alice. We look at James’ disappointment in the theater, his relationship with close friend Constance Fenimore Woolson, and interactions with sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen. Several other prominent people of the era make a cameo appearance, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Oscar Wilde. It flashes back to his early life in the US, desire to become a writer, education, avoidance of service in the American Civil War (two of his brothers fought for the Union), and relocation to England.

It is a deeply drawn imaginative psychological character study, which provides the reader with insight into James’ personality. It is based on extensive research. What struck me immediately is his reclusiveness, and desire for solitude related to having time to read and write. He enjoyed friendships with a small number of people but retreated when it felt too intimate. What is left between the lines is his romantic inclinations, implying he was closeted. It follows Henry James as he journeys to sites in Ireland, US, UK, France, and Italy.

The novel is written in a looping style, where we revisit earlier scenes from a slightly different perspective. The writing style is artistic and elegant. The tone is quiet and contemplative. It is written in a style that pays homage to “the master,” and has a 19th century feel to it.

It is not necessary to be familiar with James’ body of work but helps to know at least something about him. If you have read even a few of James’ books, you will notice Tóibín’s use of the same subtle and probing technique that James employed. I now want to read more from both James and Tóibín. Recommended to those interested in Henry James and his literature (or literary fiction in general). I loved it.

Tedious and speculative fiction supposedly about Henry James. Some obvious inaccuracies.. For example reading this book, one would conclude that James was a commercial failure as a play-write. But in fact a number of his plays were commercially successful. The author apparently needed something to humiliate James and his work as a play-write was handy because his plays are not popular now, and they are not up to the standard of his novels, stories, and essays.

An interesting and engaging glimpse into Henry James's highly interior personal life and writing process. If you like historical fiction about authors or Jamesian style, you'll lke this.

I really expected to love Colm Toibin's "The Master" -- I've liked other books by Toibin and I like Henry James. But I was somewhat disappointed because this really never came together for me. I found the James' style in Toibin's hands didn't work for me -- it became too slow and uninteresting and meditative for me to enjoy reading it.I admire what Toibin was going for here, but ultimately it didn't make good reading for me.

The Master by Colm Toibin tells the story of how author Henry James lived between January 1895 to October 1899. It opens with his unsuccessful venture into theatre with his play, “Guy Domville” and closes when he moves himself to relative seclusion in Rye, where over the next few years, he produced several of his masterpieces.Toibin explores many aspects of James life, and as the novel unfolds in a third person narrative, the reader is constantly seeing his life, through his own eyes and memory. Although the book is a fictionalized version, it is based closely on Henry James life. His sexuality is alluded to and his inclinations were obviously to the same sex, but Toibin, in true repressed Victorian style, chose to have his sexuality remain unresolved. I found The Master to be a reflective, thoughtful and subtle novel. Toibin chose to develop some key experiences in James’ life to give the reader a picture of this very private man. Yet, when he wrote about the creative process, I found it difficult to decipher where the break between author Toibin and author James existed. I believe there is a tremendous empathy toward James by Toibin and it was clear that Toibin admires the content and style of James’ writing. While I found this book interesting with beautiful, descriptive writing, I never quite warmed to the overall concept.

I loved this one! My favorite read of January. This is one of those novels featuring a blend of truth and supposition that can bring a moment in time to life, letting the reader feel as if he or she is invading personal space. Here, Tóibín explores the life of Henry James, and it is brilliantly done. It has made me want to go back and reread James' masterpiece [Portrait of a Lady] - I was really unhappy with the ending of that one, and there is a conversation presented here between James and his niece (a precocious reader) about why he ended the novel the way that he did, and it elevated that novel for me. James drew so much of his writing from personal life, and here we get insights into what and who inspired some of his most famous characters and stories. Now I am wanting to read more about James and also [All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James], which is a collection of all of Tóibín's essays on James.

Precise, polished, and perfectly understated. It is probably stunningly researched and full of clever inside jokes, too, but the prose is clean and pure. Not everyone's cup of tea.

Even for those readers for whom Henry James is definitely not The Master, the insights into his personality, passive behavior, and precise, calculating expression of emotionsilluminate the often solitary life of a writer. The pace of the book veers into belabored, considering, as James does in his books, almost every possible angle of considerationof many boring rich people's concerns.Death pervades much of the mood and readers will likely wish that he had stayed with the beloved dying cousin who loved him above all others rather than taking off on a pleasuretrip to Rome, consoling her with tales of all the fun he was having. As well, it would have been welcome if the very well off James family had not made this young girl feel "penniless"and without prospects, hastening her illness.I sloughed through because this was the book I had chosen to fulfill the Irish Author Challenge and was near catatonic until William James came to Rye and spoke his mind!Henry James wrote some great travelogue descriptions, but his novels can be wrenching, stilted with repression of feelings and actions.

A wonderful imagining of the inner life and social life of Henry James

Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carrière van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.

Beautiful novel written in a magnificent style, highly recommended even if you haven't read anything of Henry James (neither have I).

I'm a fan of Toibin but I fear this is not his best work. It seems an idiosyncratic of specialization that only the author and few people are interested in. There is nothing new or inventive about the novel, just a suturing of parts.

[The Master] is excellent biographical fiction about American author, Henry James, living and writing in Europe. Toibin focuses on the middle of James's career 1895-1899 including many flashbacks about his personal life and writing. During this time he settled in Rye, England, purchasing a house, and had already written Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady. He was yet to write The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and the Golden Bowl. Toibin seems to really capture James's personality in this book. Rather than a discovery of James through his known travels, correspondence, etc, Toibin uses these facts in the background to create a real character study. He subtly reveals James's habits of observation and how they were used to create his work. He also illuminates the personality traits of this fussy, particular, sensitive man in a way that made me feel fondness rather than annoyance, a great feat on Toibin's part as these are characteristics that drive me crazy! Reading this book in tandem with [The Ambassadors] was a great experience for me. I really identified with Toibin's take on Henry James and could see how James's personality and writing style converged. This book may make me a bit more patient with James's wordiness (or not, but I hope so) and definitely will make me more appreciate the power of his characterization and observation. I do think James has a knack for creating seeming mundane situations that take on great importance in a character's life. I like that. Toibin created excellent biographical fiction in which you can hear James's voice and witness his character all the way through the book, with no shift to an omniscient perspective or intrusion by the author. I thought it was a wise choice to present this book in third person limited. I got immersed in James without having to get too personal if it was in first person. Henry James does not seem to be the sort of person who could have given away his thoughts, even in his own head, so first person would have been too revealing. Really excellent book.

This is such an enjoyable read. Toibin inhabits Henry James, the novelist, during a period towards the latter part of his life when he moves to Rye on the south coast of England. Toibin borrows from the style of Henry James and, if I may say so, is better at writing in Henry James's style that James, The Master himself.The novel reflectsback on aspects of James's life and coyness on his sexuality and weaves through the ispiration of some of his writing and the possible real relations he had with people who inhabit James's novels.It's a curious thing that the house James moved to in Rye, Lamb House, was also the home much later of E F Benson, another gay man whose novels of Mapp and Lucia are such a gay romp

“Life is a mystery and…only sentences are beautiful,” Colm Tóibín’s Henry James observes when asked, toward the end of The Master, the moral of his stories. And to be sure, there is no want of beautiful sentences in this novel of five years in Henry James’ life. It begins with his disastrous play, “Guy Domville”, in 1895 and ends with a rapprochement of sorts between Henry and his older brother, William, the noted psychologist. Through a series of studies of crucial events in James’ life over this period, Tóibín paints the portrait of an artist at peace with his life-choices, dedicated to his subtle art, always seeming to stand at the entrance to a room observing sensitively without ever giving away too much of himself.The prose is wonderfully evocative. Not so much an imitation of James’ style as a worthy homage. It is richly dense, enough so that you will linger in reading it. But it is never ponderous. Tóibín’s love for James, both author and man, comes through clearly. It may indeed be Tóibín’s finest work.The only hesitation I have in recommending it whole-heartedly is that I don’t understand why a writer of Tóibín’s talents would undertake such a work of fiction. This is a general bemusement not confined to this work in particular. Such a work of hagiographic historical fiction always, it seems to me, trades upon the reader’s often malformed assumptions about the historical figure or the historical period. In some ways this frees the author to concentrate on the portrait and ignore the frame. But it also constrains the meaning that might be conveyed. Of course this is merely a limitation on the form and not a comment on its execution, which here is done about as well as I could ever imagine it. And on that ground I feel confident in recommending it.

I found The Master, Tóibín's biographical novel about Henry James both fascinating and occasionally tedious. Tóibín uses a selective omniscient narrator to get into James's head to seemingly reveal how his reactions, musings and reminiscences informed the crafting of his novels. In actuality, however, what Tóibín has done is used the novels (and undoubtedly biographies and critical studies) to craft his own portrait of James in this novel. Tóibín creates a psychological portrait of James that resembles the kind of psychological portrait of characters created by Henry James himself. If that sounds circular, it is, but it is intriguing.The action of the novel takes place from 1895-1899 when James was in his fifties. However we learn much about James earlier in his life as he remembers incidents and people from his younger days. The major people with whom James interacts are his siblings, William and Alice; his cousin, Minnie Temple; his friend, the novelist, Constance Fenimore Woolson; and the Scandinavian-American sculptor, Hendrik Christian Andersen. But James seems unable to form deeply intimate ties with anyone -- he needs his own space and solitude. Tóibín does not judge the Master -- he seeks to understand him.As there are many allusions to the more famous of James's novel in this book, it helps to be somewhat familar with his work.

The fictionalized biography can be a vexing thing! Often focusing on the scandalous or the trivial, sadly out of tune with its inspiration. This fictionalized account of James' life, or a part of it, is lovingly in tune and seems an even better mirror of him than the straight biographies which never seem to capture the subtleties of this most subtle of men and minds. I am in awe of the way Toibin has not only captured the man but also his time. He has a rare sensibility and understanding of the nature of this deeply conflicted author.
One of the things that most caught my attention is Toibin's awareness of James' almost peculiar anxiety for the care and tending of children. It has always struck me as odd that a man who was himself childless, did not spend much time in the company of children, and indeed, seemed to never have ever been a child himself and, finally, even as a child did not have much association with children should take such a deep and anxious interest in children. In the novel, he is keenly interested and saddened by the situation of Oscar Wilde's young sons and concerned for the well-being of a young girl named Mona who is, or it seems to his mind, being unconsciously, or maybe even actually abused by the guests at a house party in Ireland. He is concerned that the child is not properly chaperoned and that she is made much of at an adults' ball and is vaguely sexualized. So often children in James' books suffer from indifferent care or are used in a most calculated way of exacting revenge. From a callow reading of his work one might think that he is using them only as the ultimate examples to highlight is theme of innocence versus corruption. However, readers of What Maise Knew can be only but painfully aware of James' deep concern and anxiety for children. Interestingly the question of the child Mona, which was highly suggestive of the adults at least unwittingly sexualizing the girl, if not actually abusing her, was never returned to. It lingered in my mind exactly what the author was trying to get at. As the tireless efforts Josephine Butler uncovered, child prostitution and the shunting of these children from one wealthy household to another was hardly a secret and seems to have been a vice endemic of the European aristocracy. I still wonder if this is what Toibin was suggesting. James is certainly unsettled by the girl and her presence at a gathering which is all adults, excepting her. In true Jamesian fashion it is left a mystery.

For the most part I find The Master a masterful portrait of a complex man, a man who had a genius for subtlety and observation. Toibin captures James as well as any biography ever has, and he has done so much in the manner of James, to wit, the Mona episode.

The Master in question is Henry James and Tóibín has written an historical fiction which blurs the borders with biography. He has attempted to put his readers into the thoughts and feelings of James when he was already a successful author, revered and loved by many. His book starts with James unsuccessful attempts at becoming a playwright in 1895 and takes us through to 1899 when the author was 57 years old and still had what many critics believe to be his major achievements in front of him.Tóibìn examines in some detail the themes that surround the life of this author; an American exiled in Europe writing about Americans abroad, his seemingly repressed sexuality (homosexuality). his difficulties in becoming intimate with any one human being and his ambiguity about his need for his own space and order in his life. As this is Tóibín writing, expect no sensationalism, but a sympathetic portrait that I think succeeds in getting under the skin of a gentle man who was a little out of step with the society that he portrayed so brilliantly in his novels. Tóibín’s understated prose fits perfectly with the character, who he succeeds in bringing to life in this compelling biography.Henry James moved in the upper echelons of society, he came from a respected American family and could quickly adapt to living in England and the rest of Europe, he knew how to behave and his manners were impeccable. Towards the end of his book Tóibin has the Baroness von Rabe tell Henry James some home truths and as readers we wince at her accuracy, but it does not jolt our sympathy for him. The scene is at a gathering of American exiles in Rome and the Baroness succeeds in hitting her target when she says to him:“I remember you when you were young and all the ladies followed you, nay fought with each other to go riding with you. That Mrs Sumner and young Miss Boott and young Miss Lowe. All the young ladies and those not so young. We all liked you and I suppose you liked us as well, but you were too busy gathering material to like anyone too much. You were charming of course, but you were like a young banker collecting our savings. Or a priest listening to our sins. I remember my aunt warning me not to tell you anything”She leaned towards him conspiratorially.“and I think that is what you are still doing. I don’t think you have retired. I wish however you would write more clearly and i’m sure the young sculptor, who is watching you, I’m sure he wishes the same.”We know that this is not the whole story. Tóibín while describing the significant events in the years covered by the book also fills in important details of James’ earlier life, particularly his relationship with his brothers and sister and his family background. For example in the chapter dealing with May 1896; James is finding it difficult to write, he has a sort of repetitive strain injury and this leads him to reminisce about other issues that were important in his life and we learn about his family and their involvement in the American Civil War. This background ‘filling in’ becomes part of the biography and succeeds in presenting to us a full and rounded picture of Henry James. The first chapter headed January 1985 tells us about the opening night of James’ play Guy Domville. It is a disaster and James as a nervous author cannot bear to be in the theatre and takes himself off to a production of Oscar Willde’s The importance of Being Ernest. James does not like the play and significantly cannot understand why the audience finds it so amusing. James himself understands that the life of a playwright is exciting, the social interaction with directors and actors is stimulating, it is something he wishes he could do, but realises he is more suited to the lonely life of a novelist. The comparison with Wilde’s openly gay persona is also a marked contrast with Henry James’ closet homosexuality. It all points to one of the major themes of the book which is James’ inability for intimacy and it is this which Toibin suggests both shapes and defines his art.Tóibin surmises that James felt intense guilt about his failure to do what was expected by friends who he became particularly close to. Others accuse him of not being there for a couple of his female friends at their time of need, and it is this which pushes Tóibíns book into the realms of conjecture. We cannot know what Henry James felt, but it is the novelists job to make us think that we do and this is what makes this meta biography such an absorbing read. The period detail is lovingly described and we sense Henry James’ pride in his position in the world. It is a biography that goes further than telling a story of a life and so it would appeal to readers who have not read, or even know nothing about Henry James. It is a portrait of a man and his times and for me a four star read.

In contemporary 21st c. writing, it is a High Crime not to acknowledge that the historical, such as an actual subject, the novelist Henry James of PORTRAIT OF A LADY, is separated from fiction, such as THE MASTER by COLM TOIBIN, for "never the twain meets." Now we know from Toibin that the art of writing, as a matter of survival, in the truth-telling business of every day life, like that of high science, must follow other rules, which change, for the survival of the species involved. The realization of each and both -- literature and biographical/auto-biographical history -- together consists of tissue thin sensitivities of the physical and the nonphysical (non-material to our five senses but not to the sixth). Nevertheless, independantly and together, the knowable through scientfic observations, testings, and theories,that have independently been come together is a rather fresh if not new kind of literary and historical fact of life in Toibinʻs hands. THE MASTER, as Colm Toibin crafts the novel, is a literary testament to Sir Cyril Burtʻs late 19th and early 20th c. understanding of the unseen forces of physics and psychology (conceived then as science and meta-physics (suggesting a kind of factual voodooism?) such as "the Ghost in the Machine" (as Arthur Koestler reported it in his modern scientific physics, chemistry theory and experimental historyical account, THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE (1972.). Actuality, by common sense perception of the world as subject, like the human reflections upon the nature of Nature, of which is Henry Jamesʻ studied perception of the people around him is merely one instance of the case -- is more lie than truth, but far from worthless. When literary characters are presented in their psychological forms -- Henry James in a cocoon of stolid, formidable disciplined New England characteristic reserve and his family memories in his and Aliceʻs and othesʻ lettered memories, and through the intervention of author Toibinʻs researched information long after, we onlookers have very little to say for we are captives of the traced memories that weave in, out, through, over and everywhere of the footnoted histories and our impressions of the subject and his world. So we are left to register responses rather than review Toibinʻs Book. it is experienced phenomena on multiple levels, spaces, and times more than as categorical literary fare, like a straightforward narrative. We are given a fiction that is also non-fiction, true or false and both. What falls between and around their connections is also tenable, yet firmly not dismissable because unclassified with certainty. It is not phantasy, not dream, not art, not science but a groping for what is there, if clear as well as confusing in parts. Because the subject, Henry James, known to the author Toibin in his own special relationship to James, is unknown to us except as some other person, independently, we think, of what Toibin brings to us as his experience of Henry James, Fact And Fiction.Everything Toibin says is Possible as meaningful idea and experience. The verified facts, like those of his birth and non-marriage, are trite. But the verified facts of his time, like the end of the 19th c. and first part of the 20th, are not. The context of Henry Jamesʻ social life, from sheer repetition of other lives like his having been Possibly gay and suffering, is temptingly verifiable; yet we cannot actually affirm that categorically. Toibin combines the Possible with the verified trite to the suspected Implied or the understandably Inferred --in a way that makes us hold our opinion or judgement because they are of no consequence. Delectably, they are real. The surprise gives pleasure because honest, among other things that might be said about it -- half truth, seductively, merely, but enough not to be a abandoned. There are few enough pleasures in life, proferred by art, literary being only one, and not second to biographical and auto-biographical, one is tempted to dismiss criticisms that warn because what is at the end of the rainbow is the dreamed pot of gold. Possibly.So we are seductively led to infer (that is. short of believing? but not quite) that Henry James was closer to the women in his life than to the men. For he, too, like the women of the time, suffered the personal outrages that the assumption of male superiority clamped down upon them -- his sister Alice, for example, repressed from being the unseen person in the family of four boys; his cousin Minny, because, like Alice, she is presumed to be "inferior" to all males, regardless of her demonstrated greater intelligence than theirs; the noble born woman friend whose husband, a British military officer of somewhat high rank, has in her employ a soldier-manservant named Hammond, perfect to the sensibilities of the famous writer Henry James himself, one and contentiously the same in life and in fiction, a male/female/male -- the only true gender, as the biological African EVE of modern anthropology proposes . . . .Toibin masterfully binds one to his artful telling so that there is little resistance to the marriage of fiction and history but rather a willingly acquiescense to both as not only inseparable but the only true Possible, in his depiction of Henry James, the preserver of virtues the chiefest of which is his integrity of person, i.e. his body, mind, and spirit, which was/is gay. Possibly. All fiction owes its truth-telling to the reality that is supposedly non-fiction. But the body is not merely skin, bones, organs, in movement in time, we do know, but how do we account for what we are not sure we know or do not know of half-knowing states and conditions? Henry James is less of an enigma than before Toibin begins his artful exposition of the inside realizations of the man as he encounters different persons (Toibinʻs Possibles) -- it is a kind of make-believe truth-like telling biography, helped by autobiographical elements like Jamesʻ letters to and from relatives and friends. We are led to encounter forms of a famous writer at his sparest moments of responding to persons intent on insulting him (like Mr. Webster, the high government official that he is introduced to at a British military officerʻs party in Ireland who reveals he knows the Jamesʻ Irish origins as so humble, they migrated) or connecting with him without a single word uttered (Hammond, the soldier-manservant) or his brother William, who, with him, the last of the surviving James Senior family gives advice that younger brother Henry finally rejects for advice of his own devising. In that, he is a free person, finally, coldly rational and (at last) resentful -- in self-defense. In writing. Which is a kind of silence, unspoken but plainly indicative of the person Henry Jamesʻ displeasure, manifest, for certain, for once.An LT viewer named V.V.Harding thought the fictionalized Henry "tame" considering his A London Life. I have not read a London Life. I would say Henry James is never tame, not even by comparison with other writings, and Toibin never mistakes Jamesʻ long suffering withholding of committed responses for meaning nothing at all. He shows James at his most deeply troubled -- a descendant of the Puritans, famous for their formidable coldness in society, developed out of bitter, long winters, originally in (as they conceived) hostile Indian territory, and a life build out of a wilderness, far beyond anything that their former civilized life had ever allowed as Possible . . .which fact did not, notwithstanding, prevent them from converting the Indians even if they did not, as the pilgrims, amicably befriend them. Jamesʻ sense of person was carried by an indomitable Will, and formidable Harvard education, at the time represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his outer ego Henry Thoreauʻs show casing the simple life in less than simple Walden Pond, not far from bustling Concord, Oliver Wendell Holmes . . .for which background there had already risen in a kind of simple majestic purity of voice a Nathaniel Hawthorne and sensitive Longfellow . . . . Henry James was gifted, rightly by culture, also through the impenetrable self-righteousness of the tight-lipped migrated religious Englishman who loved freedom to worship so much his love turned to a passion for political justice that settled an indomitable will known to the world since as American Puritan. Toibin, who is Irish, as James, both of whom knew suffering subjections by demand of Powers greater than they, understands the temperament: its signature is Silence with a Will to Freedom to life as their need demanded, despite ridiculed, as by the official Webster, or charmed and encouraged, as by calm, focussed, friendly soldier-manservant Hammond.Toibin introduces a new genre: the combination of fiction, biography, autobiography, and history, often enough inseparable in the narrative of Henry James, Person who is Writer. He does so more openly than the Russian Bulgakov of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA. But James is very much an American at his best, as Toibin proves is Possible to understand, as Bulgakov, infinitely more repressed and utterly oppressed as well also shows of a later succeeding generation from two very different national and personal histories about which we gain an inside viewing late, but grateful.THE MASTER was short-listed title for the Booker Prize. In my mind, it is a Booker Prize winner,excellences being always, to me, incomparable. Only the unreality of practicality presumes that art that is excellent is comparable -- which no one believes, as I, emphatically, do not.

This is a masterful book about a masterful subject – Henry James and his writing. The book opens with an imagined nighttime awakening from which James thinks about his day and how it might go. In a few paragraphs, he condenses the tone and content that he then fills out and details in the rest of the book. Though the book is called The Master, the title could almost be ironic. As portrayed by Tóibín, James is uncertain, often uncomprehending, self-doubting and self-deceiving. He misreads his support in London after his first and only play opens and fails on its first night, then flees to Ireland rather than face his friends. He allows a domineering acquaintance to push him into furnishing his home with items he doesn’t really want. He allows his servants to appear drunk and slovenly in front of guests rather than confront them. Most disastrously, he allows his closest friend, a woman, to fall in love with him, but rather than talk about it, he avoids her, leading or contributing to her recent suicide. (Following which, he manages to have himself appointed her literary executor, and secretly burns any compromising correspondence with her.) He has strong homoerotic feelings without even acknowledging them for what they are (understandable in the context of the times, when Oscar Wilde, whom James thinks shallow and clumsy, faces his own disgrace and imprisonment). Far from being a master, this view of James has him as a diffident, ineffectual stumbler.Yet he observes and interprets what he sees around him as the basis for a lifetime of deeply sensitive, insightful literature. In spite of the frequent misunderstanding of his readers, his family and friends, he stays fixed to his conception of his writing. He thinks about style, themes, content for a variety of stories in the course of the novel (and it’s fascinating to see where well known stories like The Turn of the Screw come from – curious also to find out how much ghosts, both spectral and metaphorical, fit into his life and his writing). He pulls themes from his own complex relationships with his family and friends, and from what he understands, or is willing to admit, about them. Underlying much of the characterization of James is his repression of his homosexuality, which leads to his need to control and hide so much of his life from others and from himself. And yet, while struggling to repress, or at least control, his life, he somehow has enough awareness to use his observations as fodder for his stories. He is, in fact, a master in his writing. It is fitting that the book ends with James explaining to a friend that “the moral … is that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful.” After which, he sends his friends home and returns to his writing.Tóibín himself writes with a control and insight that seem equal to James’. As a skilled writer himself, and author of a previous book on James, I can see his fascination with the details of James’ life and writing process. He uses James’s own style, complex and internal, on James himself, a kind of homage to a literary master. He traces the development of James’ thinking, his development of story ideas, his resentment of other people’s misinformed views of his writing and his appreciation of the few who do understand him. In James’ interior monologues, Tóibín traces the shifting relationships and sense of control, just as James would do in his own writing. I wonder how much of this is Tóibín’s imagining of the literary process taken from his own insight as a masterful writer, and how much comes from his research into James’ thinking from James’ letters and other personal writing. I think it must be at least as much the former as the latter, for this is a work of imagination, not simply a knitting together of various stories from James. And, as always in fictions about real people, the stories are about the author’s characters, not the people they are modeled on.In the end, the book gives me an insight, not only into James’ life, but also into his stories. It makes me want to read more James. But it also introduces me to Tóibín as a skilled novelist that I want to read more.

A complex man is portrayed in a complex narrative. Toibin takes us inside the mind of Henry James. Through flashbacks, we grow to understand how Henry James's childhood in America, his experiences during the Civil War, and his family relationships shaped his life and led him to live in England and write some of the most influential novels of the era. Some of my favorite passages were the ones that shed light on James's writing process and helped us understand the multiple influences on a novelist. This is incredibly well-written. I wish I had read it at a calmer time. I felt like it deserved even more attention.

This 2004 novel by Irish author Colm Tóibín is a fictionalized biography of Henry James. The time period is the late 1800’s and it reads like a who’s who in literature. Henry James, the author of The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove and many others was an American who lived his life in Paris, Rome, London and other less known places. Henry James spent some time in Ireland. He didn’t like it even though the James family was from Ireland before they immigrated to the U.S. After the failure of his play, Guy Domville Henry James goes to Ireland to get away from the public. He spent time there with English people who were policing Ireland for the King. Ireland is described as squalor and threatening, those of mendicant class and those with money and manners. Henry James never married and this book present James as sexually inhibited, frustrated man who never married. There is allusions to his being a secret homosexual but this is only speculation based on letters her wrote to the a young Norwegian Hendrik Andersen. Hendrik Andersen was a sculptor who wanted to start a art political system called the World City which would be a Utopia of artist creating a better world. There was a large age difference and the affection expressed could have been fatherly and European in nature and never meant to be sexual. Henry had many sexually suppressed relations with females including Constance Fenimore Woolson. Henry never really wanted to give up his solitude and share his life beyond short periods and he never married.
I enjoyed this book and now look forward to finishing The Wings of the Dove which has sat on my shelf half read for way too long. The author also describes Henry James way of writing his stories which are really about his observations and his family and himself. In The Turn of the Screw the girl and boy are Henry and his sister Alice. Many of the females in his books are his cousin Minny Temple. This was a very enjoyable read.

A meticulous exploration of a sensitive but very guarded person, only able to deal with his feeling (and then not all of them) by writing fictional accounts. The fact that the subject, Henry James, and his family are well known real people added to the enjoyment.