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The Ambassadors (Penguin Popular Classics)
 
 
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The Ambassadors (Penguin Popular Classics) (Hardcover)

by Henry James (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (25 Aug 1994)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140621113
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140621112
  • Product Dimensions: 18 x 11 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,147,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Lambert Strether is sent by his wealthy fiancee, Mrs Newsome, to Paris to bring home her son Chad who is required to take charge of the family business. When Strether arrives he discovers the young man much changed by his old world environment and his relations with the Countess de Vionette.


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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult prose, but comic and moving, 15 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
The prose is certainly difficult, but the extra attention it requires from the reader yields benefits: the slightest nuance in the narrative registers. And, as in all late James, these subtle hints and nuances are of the essence.

I was rather surprised as to how funny it often was. But, as with many great comedies - "Twelfth Night", "Don Quixote" - there is a profound sadness under the surface. There is a passage near the beginning where Strether looks back on the disappointments of his life, and, in particular, his failure to communicate with or understand his son, who is now dead. This passage affected me so deeply, that I had to read it a few times before progressing with the rest of the novel.

Strether becomes increasingly aware that life has passed him by, and that in the course of it all, he has missed something: but what it is he has missed he can not specify. He urges the young people around him to live, but his instructions on how to do so are necessarily vague. Eventually, he has to to reject the narrow puritanical code which has fettered his life, but remains to the end a quixotic figure, clinging on to his moral integrity even when all around him appear to lose theirs. The closing episodes of this novel are as moving as anything I have read.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Mr James and His Rebarbative Periphrastic Circumambages., 10 Aug 2009
By R. A. Johnson "raoul_malaria" (Britain.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Ambassadors (Classics) (Paperback)
Frankly, this book drove me up the wall. I came to it on the joyous wave of 'Portrait of a Lady' and the straightforward pleasures of 'Washington Square' and ran smiling into the impenetrable wall of James' prose. Everything you have heard about the dense thickets of grammar are true, and I confess I lacked the necessary machete of patience. All characters live in a state of constant allusion and circumlocution, and are forever describing each other: "Of course, she's wonderful...", "Of course, he is the most charming...", "Of course, she is magnificent...'" without the reader ever quite being allowed to actually see any wonder or charm or magnificence being employed by any of the people so described.

If this is to be your first Henry James experience, it shouldn't be. 'Portrait of a Lady', on the other hand, quivers with delightfulness.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The failure to enjoy, 15 Mar 2007
By Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
A wealthy US family sends its `ambassadors' to Paris in order to convince an heir to abandon the `life of a pagan' and return home to run the family business.
The theme of Henry James's impeccably written and extremely polished prose is what Nietzsche called the `right or the wrong conjugation': to live or to be lived. `One lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be like me, without the memory of that illusion. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Live!'

For Henry James, people lived in `the corruption of Europe' with its `femmes du monde'; people were lived in the US. It is the Catholic (live like God in France) against the Protestant ethic (`I seem to have a life only for other people').
We are far away here from the Calvinist lesson of `Daisy Miller' who died because she didn't respect the supreme respectability of her class.

The novel advances extremely slowly, is full of suggestions, hints, (mis)understandings and fluctuating feelings. Direct confrontations are subdued to the extreme, and end with a laugh.
The novel has another typical characteristic of James's stories: it's all about `thoroughbred' people, sublime members of the high society. They are presented in a superlative style: prodigious, exquisite, graceful, supreme, transcendent, precious, admirable, beautiful, bright, lovely, magnificent, splendid, brilliant, wonderful ...

With its essential message, this novel is a classic masterpiece.
Not to be missed.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, a classic tale - Henry James through and through.
I would recomend any of the books by Henry James, he is a excellent story teller, he has the abilty to draw you into the story and capture your sole attention. Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2000 by tracey@sfb.co.uk

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