What Maisie Knew

November 26, 2012
Young Maisie Farange finds herself the unwitting pawn in her parents’ divorce, as her mother and father use her as a tool for personal attacks. As both parents find new romantic partners, Maisie, who is mature beyond her age, is thrust even further into an adult world of betrayal and sexual gamesmanship. In this audio edition, Maureen O’Brien delivers a standout performance of James’s classic novella. Even for audiences who might not enjoy James’s prose, O’Brien’s narration is both gripping and suitably melancholy. She captures the boiling anger of the adult world, as well as Maisie’s sadness and confusion. Maisie’s relationship with her governess Mrs. Wix, the sole point of emotional consistency in the young girl’s life, is particularly poignant, thanks to O’Brien’s reading. Though there’s relatively little dialogue in James’s work—most of the action takes place through narration, filtered through Maisie’s point of view—O’Brien excels at creating unique personalities for the different characters. Her Maisie, in particular, sounds like a child—intelligent but also extremely vulnerable.

Maisie's parents, whose fecklessness challenges credulity, have divorced each other, then each abandoned their second spouses, then quit the stage entirely, leaving Maisie with two stepparents and a nanny in conflict, as all three of them seem desperately to want to keep and raise the orphan. Maisie, who has had virtually no education and spent almost no time with other children, is the narrator's great challenge, written as blankly innocent but with adult speech patterns and a hyper-attentive shrewdness. Lorna Raver makes her human. Her adults are even better, vivid and self-revealing, and outmaneuvered by Maisie. Raver's English accents are not perfect, but this distracts little from the pleasure of her performance, which is filled with intelligent empathy and human warmth for these unlikely characters. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

November 15, 2012

James's classic, which was serialized in 1897, explores the confusion, heartbreak, and despair of a young girl following her parents' divorce at the turn of the 20th century. Maisie is used as nothing more than a pawn between her spiteful parents, and she begins to realize this as she matures. She vainly tries to find a trustworthy guardian to look up to, but despite all the adults, governesses, and new spouses in her life, she can find no one to admire. Although the story is quite wordy and drawn out, voice actress Maureen O'Brien, with her smooth and captivating English accent, skillfully transports the reader back a century and brings Maisie to life, first as a little girl and then as a young woman. VERDICT Recommended for James's fans and those interested in late 19th-century fiction. Be sure to check out the recent film adaptation starring Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgard set in present-day New York City.--Erin Cataldi, Franklin Coll. Lib., IN

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.