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by: Henry James  Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverEAN: 9780554253299 Format: Large Print ISBN: 0554253291 Label: BiblioLife Manufacturer: BiblioLife Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 464 Publication Date: August 18, 2008 Publisher: BiblioLife Studio: BiblioLife Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: 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. --Rhian Ellis Product Description: Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of "The Ambassadors " which first appeared in twelve numbers of The North American Review (1903) and was published as a whole the same year. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - An unconvincing conversion of an American mindThe Ambassadors, by Henry James is a book that straddles the styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It concerns the plight of the ridiculously-named Lambert Strether, sent from America to Paris to recover the wayward son of a wealthy family. Strether, who, by his own admission, is a failure, looks forward to his marriage (which I found unbelievable) with his boss, the matriarch of the family, if he is successful in bringing Chadwick home. However, while abroad he succumbs to ... Read More Rating:  - The Audiobook is EasierThe audiobook version of The Ambassadors makes the famously dense prose of Henry James easier (but not easy)to wade through. Most of the book consists of scenes in which two of the several principals meet to discuss the basic situation: whether or not a young New England manufacturing heir, Chad Newsome, can be persuaded to leave Paris--and his paramour, Madame de Vionnet--and return to his Mom in America. Everyone else is some kind of ambassador. Most prominently, Lambert Strether is ... Read More Rating:  - The failure to enjoyA wealthy US family sends its `ambassadors' to Paris in order to convince an heir to abandon the `life of a pagan' and return home to run the family business. The theme of Henry James's impeccably written and extremely polished prose is what Nietzsche called the `right or the wrong conjugation': to live or to be lived. `One lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be like me, without the memory of that illusion. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. ... Read More Rating: - The AmbassadorsThis is surely one of the great works of literature. The style may seem at times slow going, but it rewards the patient reader with its rich, sensitive portrayal of characters and the varied effects of the old world charm of Paris on New England visitors. It is suspenseful thoughtful and brilliant in its depiction of social interactions. Rating:  - Wrong coverThe book arrived in good condition, but it didn't have the beautiful red embossed hardcover that the website shows. 
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