This novel was thin and was a fast read. I picked it up on a whim as the cover had been calling to me for weeks. There was something about the covers design and colors that attracted my attention.   I wish I could give this novel glowing reviews since it has perked my attention for so long but unfortunately I thought the novel was just touching on the surface of a much deeper issue.   I also was craving more information about the characters and their lives, why couldn’t the author elaborate more?   The novel showcased the inequality that was occurring in the 1970’s in Africa as seen through the eyes of young Joshua.   His mother was a maid trying to earn enough money to provide for her other children who live with her parents. Separated from his siblings, Joshua tries to stay out of the eyes of the wealthy owners as he tends to a few chores around the quarters.   It’s his inquisitive mind and his childlike ways that spin this story off into another direction as Joshua runs an errand for the lady of the house and he finds himself distracted while trying to stay invisible. Joshua soon realizes that the world is a bigger place with problems that he never knew existed. It’s about rights and who is entitled to them and for young Joshua this is a new concept and one that he didn’t understand.   I wished the author would have given more history and explanation of the time period and the characters as I thought parts of the novel were confusing and not as well addressed as they could have been.   I did like the character of Joshua, his inquiring mind and his attitude brought the novel together.    

I read the first story for one of my challenges.

I might read another, but it's not typically the type of writing I enjoy.

Check it out!

;)

I'm going to have to set this one aside, at least for a while.

The story is good, but it's interspersed with long philosophical passages that have me skimming.

I'd read that Henry James had a very distinct split in styles, and that accordingly readers often differ greatly in which style they like. The only other book by Henry James I had read before this was <i>Washington Square</i>, one of his early novels, and it's a favorite--but that made me all the more reluctant to try one of his later novels and feel disappointed. I don't know if disappointment describes how I feel about <i>The Ambassadors</i>, one of his late and most celebrated novels. Bored and frustrated at times, admiring at others--but I definitely prefer the more straightforward, more simple in style <i>Washington Square.</i>

Late Henry James features some of the most convoluted sentences I've encountered in literature. I wouldn't go so far as to say this sported the kind of sentence where you are lost before you get to the end, and at times I did admire how much James could pack in--this is a novel very dense in meaning--but it probably did at the least slow the pace when you have lines filled with semi-colons, commas, dashes and other punctuation tricks to keep sentences like this one aloft:

<i>Melancholy Murger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe, at home, in the company of the tattered, one--if he not in his single self two or three--of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real thing, Strether's fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve.</i>

Also, in comparison with <i>Washington Square</i>, let alone, say Dickens, <i>The Ambassadors</i> has a paucity of plot. Not much happens here. Stether comes to Paris as the "ambassador" of his fiancee, to convince her son Chad to come home and becomes entangled with the people around him and is seduced by their charms and that of Paris. That's the core of theme and plot.  The climax of the book turns on interpreting a fleeting expression seen from afar. The dialogue is simpler than the narrative, to the point of frustration at times because there are such underplayed subtle currents you have to strain to figure out what is really going on between people. And though at times I did find those challenging nuances fascinating, especially whenever Maria Gostrey appeared, in the end I felt unmoved by these characters--a very different reaction than how I felt at the end of <i>Washington Square.</i>