Rating: 5/5
Review:
A delight
I re-read these stories with immense pleasure. I don’t much like being frightened, but these aren’t so much terrifying as enjoyably unsettling. They are masterpieces of implication and atmosphere, with the occasional overt shock.
I really like the donnish narrative voice, the wit and erudition and the fact that all the stories are based in scholarly activity of some kind. James sets a wonderful tone and his character portraits are a delight, with flashes of real wit and insight. For example, of one minor character he says “...he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus…” I just love that “respectable” (and, by the way, I hadn’t heard of Polyaenus either). In another place we get, “…tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon any non-golfing persons.” I find it a delight to read.
These stories are tightly regarded as classics, but they are classics which I read just for the pleasure of it and not, as with a number of other “classics,” because I feel I ought to. I can recommend them very warmly indeed.
I really like the donnish narrative voice, the wit and erudition and the fact that all the stories are based in scholarly activity of some kind. James sets a wonderful tone and his character portraits are a delight, with flashes of real wit and insight. For example, of one minor character he says “...he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus…” I just love that “respectable” (and, by the way, I hadn’t heard of Polyaenus either). In another place we get, “…tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon any non-golfing persons.” I find it a delight to read.
These stories are tightly regarded as classics, but they are classics which I read just for the pleasure of it and not, as with a number of other “classics,” because I feel I ought to. I can recommend them very warmly indeed.
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