Amazon.com The
Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most
exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence
with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey
of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been
dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her
son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to
convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this
all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved
in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria
Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly
Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him
to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of
course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous
mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined
characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging
morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply
fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing
is lost.
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