Michael Lindgren's Reviews > The Bostonians

Another step in the slow accretion of my lifelong project of reading the major novels and stories. The Bostonians -- maddening, thrilling, vexing, and troublesome -- illustrates again the principle that at its very highest levels fiction operates upon the reader in a messy and unpredictable way. As I write this, I am about to go to the "Great Books" discussion group at the Yale Club, which typically comprises late middle-aged women and me -- my peeps, in other words -- and which is always enlightening and amusing. It is difficult to predict how this novel's jarring and in some ways deeply unsatisfying denouement, its stern fictional renunciation of basic gender equality, and its portrayal of three fundamentally flawed and not very likable characters will sit with a sampling of contemporary readers. These elements, to my mind, are symptomatic of what I consider to be James's basic toughness -- not a word usually associated with him, obviously -- which manifests in his refusal to oblige the reader with neat and satisfying endings, or to soften the remorselessness of his satire. These are the operations of genius.