"It Was Perhaps Superficially More Striking That One Could Live If One Would; But It Was More Appealing, Insinuating, Irresistible In Short, That One Would Live If One Could"

So finishing Wings of the Dove has left me conflicted, primarily because I have mixed feelings about each of the characters. 

The main storyline is of Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who fall in love and who become secretly engaged. Kate has an Aunt, Maud Lowder, who is very wealthy and offers to make Kate her benefactress if she cuts off all communication with her sister and father and if she does not pursue the relationship with Densher, who is a poor newspaper man and who Aunt Maud does not see as suitable husband material, in spite of liking him very much as a person. Enter Milly Theale, a young wealthy American woman who becomes a sparkling new feature on the London social scene, and who completely charms Aunt Maud and Kate alike. It turns out that Densher had met Milly briefly while in New York for work, and Milly had taken a bit of a fancy to him. What becomes known later, is that Milly is dying, and she entrusts this information to her closest friend Kate, and her faithful companion, Susan Shepherd Stringham.

Once Kate discovers that Milly has such a fondness for Densher combined with the knowledge that she has a terminal illness, she enacts a plan to allow for her and Densher to be together, namely, having Densher and Milly get married so he can inherit her money once she passes away (which seems to be not that far down the road). This will improve Densher's social status and therefore make their marriage acceptable to her aunt and society in general. The whole troop of folks travel to Venice (primarily as a better suited climate for Milly's illness) for a period of time, after which, Kate and Aunt Maud depart, leaving Densher to spend devoted time with Milly to seal the deal, so to speak. 

So it may seem, in the way I've described it above, that this is really a loathsome plan, and Kate and Densher are really evil characters. But under Henry James' deft hand, I never really felt either of them to be so terrible. Both characters had arcs and moral conflicts that made them much more sympathetic characters and much less despicable than may seem. Kate really truly adored Milly and thought her to be such a "stupendous" human being (the word that both she and Densher land on to describe Milly; but more Milly in a moment). They really were devoted friends and it didn't seem from Kate that this friendship was only intended to manipulate her. And Densher was on the outside of this plot for most of the book until shortly before Kate and Aunt Maud left Venice, when Kate finally clued him into the groundwork that she had laid to ensure that absolutely no one suspected the 2 of them of having a relationship (or more correctly, she made everyone think that he was the one smitten with her and that she had zero interest in him). She explains to him what his next steps should be to ensure the success of the plan. So Densher isn't really all that bad of a guy either since he's not really the architect of this devious plan and doesn't really seem to want to go along with it. Except that he does, all the while being clear that he has no feelings for Milly (but convincing Milly otherwise) and really seems to at least initially view her in an unglamorous way, unlike everyone else who revere Milly as this angelic dove.

Which I kind of missed the boat on. I did not see Milly's character as this divine, angelic, almost flawless creature that everyone just adores. It feels like something that might be handled more successfully in a movie rather than a book, but she just felt kind of naïve and simple to me. And I guess maybe that's why she was so ideal to everyone else, because they were inherently flawed and devious. But struggling to view the character in the same way as the characters of the book made it really hard for me to get on board with the entire premise of the book because so much hinges on exactly how everyone feels about Milly as this wonderful human being.  

I won't give away the end, but I think it was handled beautifully, down to the very last sentence of the novel. As a result of their plotting, both characters Kate and Densher are dramatically changed, morally, with Densher in particular significantly changing his view and affections towards Milly. The characters and their choices, struggles, and motivations were so rich and really were the strength of the entire novel. The narrator is omniscient so you get the full knowledge of every nuance of each character when the given chapter is told from his/her perspective. And that's really the bulk of the book; all in all, there isn't a ton of action that occurs, but so much time and page space devoted to the thoughts and sentiments of the characters. So in that aspect, it makes the plot of the novel so much more convincing and believable when placed up against each of the characters' motivations. 

Overall, I did enjoy very much (once I finally got into it). James wasn't as difficult to read as I thought it would be, although he is a big fan of what I call the interrupted sentence. He likes to place asides or additional clauses right in the middle of a thought or sentence. While I like to generally do this with parentheses (scroll back through post to get, oh, maybe 10? examples of my fondness for this), he generally adds them with hyphens, and the interruptions are varied in their type and function. So these sure did slow me down when reading, because I always had to reread the sentence without the interruption and then with to actually get what it even said. But overall to me, this technique demonstrated so much skill and thought and its function in the overall telling of the story gave it a very unique style. 

So up next, I'll be taking a short break from the book lists to read Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. My sister is in a book club and she consistently raves about most of the books that her group reads. And not gonna lie, it makes me a little jelly, where I wish I could only focus on reading current literature. And I know that reading books from these book lists is my own self-imposed task (punishment?), but sometimes it gets a little cumbersome and not enjoyable when I stumble on a book that is dense and challenging. So I've made a side list of her fav book club books (more LISTS!) and will plan to slot them in when I need a break from the books on the other 4 lists (got that?). But I also still want to maintain my own discovery of current literature to read, whether by hearing about it through podcasts, articles, recommendations from others, or bookstore browsing. Needless to say my stack of "to read" books is getting notably larger! 

On that note, off I go. Happy Thursday! 224 books to go!