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Bettie's Reviews > The Master
The Master
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Bettie's review
bookshelves: hardback, booker-shortlist, one-penny-wonder, paper-read, published-2003, lit-richer, books-about-books-and-book-shops, summer-2015, tbr-busting-2015, dublit-impac-winner
Oct 29, 2014
bookshelves: hardback, booker-shortlist, one-penny-wonder, paper-read, published-2003, lit-richer, books-about-books-and-book-shops, summer-2015, tbr-busting-2015, dublit-impac-winner
Description: The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America's first intellectual families two decades before the Civil War. In stunningly resonant prose, Tsibmn captures the loneliness and longing, the hope and despair of a man who never married, never resolved his sexual identity, and whose forays into intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love.
Withdrawn from London Borough of Redbridge Libraries
Opening: January 1895. Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead - familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Now as he woke, it was, he imagined, an hour or more before the dawn; there would be no sound or movement for several hours. He touched the muscles on his neck which had become stiff; to his fingers they seemed unyielding and solid but not painful. As he moved his head, he could hear the muscles creaking. I am like an old door, he said to himself.
Not being much of a Henry James fan I didn't mind the implications, yet do wonder if this was slightly bitchy. TóibÃn is a wordsmith but there is that nasty taste left in the mouth. Nora Webster suited me far better.
3* The Master
TR The Blackwater Lightship
4* Nora Webster
LIDA - The Testament of Mary - subject matter does not appeal
Withdrawn from London Borough of Redbridge Libraries
FOR BAIRBRE AND MICHAEL STACK
Opening: January 1895. Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead - familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Now as he woke, it was, he imagined, an hour or more before the dawn; there would be no sound or movement for several hours. He touched the muscles on his neck which had become stiff; to his fingers they seemed unyielding and solid but not painful. As he moved his head, he could hear the muscles creaking. I am like an old door, he said to himself.
Not being much of a Henry James fan I didn't mind the implications, yet do wonder if this was slightly bitchy. TóibÃn is a wordsmith but there is that nasty taste left in the mouth. Nora Webster suited me far better.3* The Master
TR The Blackwater Lightship
4* Nora Webster
LIDA - The Testament of Mary - subject matter does not appeal
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Reading Progress
October 29, 2014
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Started Reading
October 29, 2014
– Shelved
August 24, 2015
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Finished Reading
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by
Steve
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rated it 4 stars
Aug 24, 2015 02:11PM
If you still have a taste for TóibÃn, I thought Brooklyn was a cut above. Most women I know who have read it agree that he got into his female protagonist's head very convincingly.
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I also liked Brooklyn very much. A book where more happened than might have been obvious and the portrait of its passive protagonist was masterful.
Marita wrote: "I loved this book, as I thought that he really mimicked Henry James very well."Me too - I think ToÃbÃn did a great job mimicking Henry James here but I agree, Bettie, that he was intent on revealing aspects of his life James had worked hard at hiding - so in that sense, it could be seen as bitchy.
Fionnuala wrote: "Marita wrote: "I loved this book, as I thought that he really mimicked Henry James very well."Me too - I think ToÃbÃn did a great job mimicking Henry James here but I agree, Bettie, that he was i..."
Though I remember liking it, I also remember a sense of unease after finishing it. Perhaps that's why.
