The Wings of the Dove

By: Henry James

Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson

Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's Summary

Milly Theale is a young, beautiful, and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems: materialism, romance, self-delusion, and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate the glamorous social whirl.

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Public Domain (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooks

Not an easy read but SO worth it!

Henry James's writing is not for everybody. It is incredibly dense and detailed and he deep dives into the ruminative thoughts of all the major characters at such length that for the first 1/3 of the book, you might find yourself going a little crazy, thinking WHERE IS THE PLOT?! But the book picks up in intensity after the midway mark and I literally could not stop listening. The story is deeply philosophical, about the nature of love, betrayal and just how far one would go to get what one wants - only to then have to live with the consequences. It's absolutely Shakespearian, this story. If you want to be a "well read" person, you should read at least one Henry James novel and that should be this one. Give it a chance, be patient, retrain your focus when you begin to drift, and you will be richly rewarded, in the end.

No one but Juliet Stevenson...

... could do Henry James justice. I'm convinced of it. His sentences are so long, his sensitivities and observations so nuanced (and downright complicated) that one needs either large print and lots of concentrated time to delve in, or the velvety syllable-by-syllable de-ciphering of a master codebreaker. Thank you, Ms. Stevenson, for once again opening the classics to me. Please keep them coming!

Challenging text, beautifully read

This late novel by James is full of nuance, indirectness and innuendo. It requires a highly gifted and intelligent reader to capture the subtle shades of meaning and feeling. Juliet Stevenson is superb at fathoming and expressing the inner and outer worlds of each protagonist in this complex work.

Disappointing accent

I love Juliette Stevens’ reading generally, but was distracted throughout Wings of the Dove by the odd accent she used for the two American characters. It sounded forced and was unconvincing.

Well narrated but not a gripping story

Time to take up my pen and go after Henry James again. Of all the Victorian novelists I’ve read over the years (many out of a sense of duty — I was an English major, after all, and I never lost the habit), he’s probably my least favorite. He's like Anthony Trollope, but without any of the humor or charm.

The problem is that he's verbose, almost past the point of endurance. His prose is sometimes like being forced to read the Collected Grocery Lists of Edward Casaubon. This novel, and many of the other novels of his that I've read, would benefit enormously from a ruthless editor. Each chapter, each paragraph, maybe even each sentence could lose about 20% of its verbiage without losing its plain sense; and the meaning and impact of the story would come through all the more brilliantly.

In Wings of the Dove, Kate has a problem. She loves the (relatively) poor journalist Merton, but if she marries him, her Aunt Maud — on whom she is financially dependent — will cut her loose. Enter the bright and ridiculously rich American girl Milly, on a European tour. It gradually becomes apparent that Milly is seriously ill, maybe even terminally ill. (From cancer? Consumption? She doesn't have any obvious symptoms, and James never says.) It also gradually becomes apparent that Kate has developed an ingenious plan to solve her financial woes and set her and Merton free from the clutches of her family. All he has to do is make Milly fall in love with him, marry her, and then wait for her to die.

As unpleasant as I found James’s characters through most of the book, they began to take on an almost tragic dimension as the story drew near its end. Merton is trying to do the right thing, or the closest he can get to it; Kate acts from more questionable motives initially, but what a family! — she's in a trap not of her own making, and an argument could be made that if her plan came off, no one would actually get hurt. But it's a Henry James novel, so her plan doesn't come off; in fact it leads to a conclusion that squeezes about as much pain out of the situation as possible — and then squeezes a little more by having the novel end almost in mid-sentence.

Although the style of the book didn't always appeal to me, that is in no way the fault of Juliet Stevenson. She is a truly wonderful narrator, and is easily my favorite among the different narrators of James I've listened to. (She does an outstanding job with just about everybody: she's also one of my favorite narrators of Jane Austen and George Eliot.) I've read occasional criticism of her American accents, but I think she does just fine with Milly Theale and her annoying friend Susan Stringham. This is one of James’s later books, and his syntax became more gnarly toward the end, with one dependent clause piling up on another; but Stevenson seems to have a particular knack for parsing them out loud, and she never loses the thread.

If you like Henry James, you'll love this one. If you don't like Henry James, you might like this one, or you might enjoy the narration for its own sake. A lot may depend on whether you were an English major or not.

Excruciating and tedious

Henry James writes beautifully. Unfortunately, he writes beautifully about nothing. I can't help but wonder if Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are fans?

I have never been a huge fan of the Victorian era but, as so many early 20th Century works pepper the Modern Library's Top 100 novels, alas, they must be endured. And it is no stretch of the metaphor that Wings of the Dove was an endurance event.

As perviously stated James writes beautifully but his characters are bland and unlikeable people. They are purely self involved, incapable of genuine expression and so self conscious because of their class distinction that they are absolutely devoid of any quality to warrant empathy due to the restrictions imposed by both the class they belong and to the class they aspire.

Perhaps because James was American born yet spent most of his adulthood in Britain and Europe, it feels like he is constantly trying to explain or apologize for Americans to a British audience by making every casual expression or American idiom overwrought with parenthetical and commatic explanation. This just adds to the tedium.

I believe there are other Henry James works on the list. More excrucruation to be endured, no doubt.

Difficult reading

This writing is not crystal clear. Rather, there is a vagueness to it and a formality of speech that is very challenging.

I love Juliet Stevenson

Juliet Stevenson is my favorite Audible narrator, but even she can't rescue this oblique and irritating novel. I still adore Henry James, but maybe not the late novels so much.

A masterpiece - challenging for literary novices

There’s a reason Henry James is considered one of the finest authors of all time and most certainly among the top of American authors. This is astonishing - but requires patience and close attention

Brilliant rendition of a masterwork.

Two remarkable creatures entwined in the embrace of the fate of loss, one of life and the the other of love. Beneficence and sacrifice, honor borne of treachery and the freedom of a final regret. All, beautifully conveyed in an audible masterpiece.

not for me!

too wordy by far. cannot finish it. really wish I hadn't chosen this one. disappointed

Slow & wordy

Not for the faint-hearted. A great story with some superb writing but it is slow. The characters take long- windedness & never saying directly what they mean to the extreme which takes some patience from the listener/reader.

beautiful book

Once you get used to the style of writing this is a beautiful and poignant story well worth listening to

Too obscure and tedious.

Did not finish it. The reading was good but the material Juliet had to read was boring.