This gem does true justice to James's vision. His characters maneuver in the realm of those who've preserved their integrity while losing their heart's desire, their fineness and delicacy inadequate armature for the rough world. Maureen O'Brien's reading splendidly creates the three central characters, her Mrs. Gareth being particularly arresting. There is great wit in this novel of repressed and diverted emotion, great comedy before the final bitterness. This reader delivers it unerringly, her sense of timing and appropriate emotion rendering with careful precision the characters' words and the passions behind them. E.J.M. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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Mrs. Gereth had said she would go with the rest to church, but suddenly it seemed to her that she should not be able to wait even till church-time for relief: breakfast, at Waterbath, was a punctual meal, and she had still nearly an hour on her hands. Knowing the church to be near, she prepared in her room for the little rural walk, and on her way down again, passing through corridors and observing imbecilities of decoration, the esthetic misery of the big commodious house, she felt a return of the tide of last night's irritation, a renewal of everything she could secretly suffer from ugliness and stupidity. Why did she consent to such contacts? why did she so rashly expose herself? She had had, heaven knew, her reasons, but the whole experience was to be sharper than she had feared. To get away from it and out into the air, into the presence of sky and trees, flowers and birds, was a necessity of every nerve. The flowers at Waterbath bath would probably go wrong in color and the nightingales sing out of tune; but she remembered to have heard the place described as possessing those advantages that are usually spoken of as natural. There were advantages enough it clearly didn't possess. It was hard for her to believe that a woman could look presentable who had been kept awake for hours by the wallpaper in her room; yet nonetheless, as in her fresh widow's weeds she rustled across the hall, she was sustained by the consciousness, which always added to the unction of her social Sundays, that she was, as usual, the only person in the house incapable of wearing in her preparation the horrible stamp of the same exceptional smartness that would be conspicuous in a grocer's wife. She would rather have perished than have looked _endimanchee._
