What one reviewer at amazon said about Golden Bowl (volume 23 & 24) (Notable American Authors):
Sandwiched in American literary time between The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, The Golden Bowl is plainly influenced by the former and an influence on the latter. In all three books, the plot hinges on an act of adultery. More importantly, in all three books, the act of adultery is never explicitly narrated to us. We learn somehow that the infidelity has occurred, and judge the subsequent behavior of characters in light of the infidelity.
There is a tendency in book reviews and literature classes to "boil down" complex works of art into manageable chunks. Suffice it here to say that The Golden Bowl resists reduction marvelously. It's Henry James at his finest, refusing to sugarcoat "love" as an innocent pastime and blessing us with brilliant characters who fully analyze their sophisticated insecurities. Book one (of two) opens with its protagonist, Amerigo, in deep reflection about his imminent marriage to the wealthy Maggie Verver. Why exactly does a rich American beauty who could have whatever man she wants purport to love a penniless, defrocked Italian "Prince?"
Make no mistake: The Golden Bowl is not light reading, and any reader who treats it as such will find him or herself backing up and rereading each sentence to capture what was lost. You can't speed through the book, looking for what "happens." You won't find it. Or at least, Henry James won't tell you straight out. James challenges the reader with the onus of judgment. Is your husband having an affair? Chances are that, rather than ask him straight out, you'll beat around the bush and judge whether he is or not by his behavior. No one conveys such tacit social jousting quite like Henry James, and in The Golden Bowl the old master is in peak form.
Divided into two books, The Golden Bowl provides a neatly segmented picture of life for a romantic couple both before (Book 1) and after (Book 2) an adultery takes place. Now the book's narrator never actually reveals that Maggie Verver, the second book's protagonist, is "on" to her husband's faithless behavior. Instead, it's something the reader must gather through subtle, nuanced shifts in the comportment and dialogue of the involved characters. One can even make a cogent argument -- based strictly on textual evidence -- that no affair has taken place.
The canonical beauty of the book is as much in its narrative style -- one of implicit revelation rather than an omniscient chronicling of events -- as it is in the actual storyline. Where Henry James has evolved from his "Portrait of a Lady" days is in the delivery of the tale. It is as though he is saying, here in his final novel (1905), "Any author worth a grain of salt can give you a straightforward, nineteenth century plot. Here is a different, more elevated manner of story-telling that departs dramatically from anything I've done before."
What we get is a work that straddles artistic boundaries, anticipating the oblique narratives of American modernism while subverting the 'and then...' style typical of the previous century's bildungsromans. On top of that, The Golden Bowl is a character-driven masterpiece, whose six characters possess distinguished Shakespearean personalites -- they are hilariously eloquent and fiercely intelligent. But that's de rigeur for a James opus. The whole book, in form and content, shines with what Harold Bloom calls James' "aesthetic eminence" -- stunning turns of phrase that you wish were yours, along with a deft narrative cadence that seamlessly unites scene upon scene into a layered and cohesive whole. The crown jewel in James' vaunted career, The Golden Bowl is a journey in American letters that no accomplished reader should fail to make.
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