The Wings of the Dove

Henry James's richly layered novel, recently filmed with Helena Bonham Carter, concerns the subtle interplay among a quartet of friends and lovers and the conflicting moral tension between selfishness and compassion, America and Europe. Like other modernist authors, James focuses on introspection and the processes of perception. These challenges require the listener to adjust to the speed of Nadia May's reading. Her accelerated delivery is consistently clear, even in navigating sentences of considerable length, but one often feels that the text possesses more richness and depth than such a pace permits one to absorb. It's satisfying to have such an important novel preserved on unabridged audio, but a more nuanced and relaxed pace would have better served this pensive book. G.H. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine


James's story of a love triangle in which nobody really wins is brought to life in shortened form in this excellent production. Kate Coy wants the impoverished Merton Densher, but she wants money, too. When dying American heiress Milly Theale enters their orbit, Kate plots to have Merton marry her and eventually inherit her fortune. Prunella Scales's elegant reading is a good match for James's prose. Her delivery of flat American diction and cultured British voices points up the English-American dichotomy in James's work. She makes Kate's Aunt Maude the penultimate upperclass Brit; one misses only the sound of youth in Kate's voice. The abridgment warrants careful listening, and two listenings would be even more rewarding. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine