An entertaining novel that incorporates elements of Henry James, but often feels more modern. ( )

Giving it 5 starts even though it is less than perfect. A necessary book for anyone who has read and either loved The Portrait of a Lady, or like me, was forced to read it for an English class, took the long hard journey and just could not "deal with" either Isabel or that ending. I was actually looking forward to reading about the aftermath of "Portrait" in a modern, straightforward, non-Jamesian style. That's not what we get from Banville. From sentence two: "Even yet she felt, did Mrs Osmond, the awful surge and rhythm of the train's wheels". Because it's a self-aware adoption of the James voice it doesn't always work or serve the interests of what I think Banville is trying to do. And that is to tell us that Isabel did not simply square her shoulders, return to Italy and re-enter the marriage -- the most horrible, granted, but nevertheless one of the imaginable possibilities James leaves us with at the end of his story. Banville has Isabel choose Team Freedom over Team Duty (thank God) and it's gratifying to read about how she regains her own agency. Did the author go over the top in characterizing Osmond as an evil villain, as some of the reviewers are suggesting? I don't think so. I found it utterly believable that he would drop all of his exquisite manners and perfect behavior and show his true colors after the discovery of his deceit. I thought Banville mirrored exactly the Madame Merle described in "Portrait". Never a ruffled feather, the picture of elegance and control - and every inch the liar completely fused to her lies. Banville's own ending sounds several wrong notes: the way he deals with Pansy - really? The hints of what Isabel will do next - women's suffrage? Well, maybe, but I don't think he had to do any of that. This book took as its charter the end of the Osmond marriage, and did it well. ( )

I’m going to bail on this after only seven chapters. I don’t know if the book is good or bad, I simply don’t think it’s going to do it for me. My “finish your plate” superego is fighting my decision, as is the knowledge that the New York Times named is a notable book at the end of the year it appeared.
Going into it, I wondered what would bother me more if Banville successfully imitates Henry James, or if he fails to continue her story in a way that fits the personality James created for Isabel Osmond, née Archer.
As for the first worry: the book abounds in Jamesian sentences, such as this: “She received Isabel with a show of muted welcome, managing the trick of coming forward while at the same time seeming to draw back, with a twist to her lips that was nearly but not quite a smile . . . .” The sentence continues on in this vein for the rest of the paragraph.
Yet some of the sentences come off as a parody of James’ style, not homage: “… not to put too fine a point on it — not to put a point on it of any fineness at all. . . .”
So my verdict on my first worry: mixed.
More serious is how Banville continues the story. One aspect is literally “how.” Based on the first seven chapters, it seems as if Banville will rely more on plot turns than on situation and character than does James. But on a deeper level: Banville seems to reduce Isabel’s character to a curious mix of pig-headedness and passivity, mixed with behavior that goes beyond naive to plain stupid. Something is missing of the regard James conveys for Isabel. Like Isabel’s cousin Ralph, Henry James seems to have placed Isabel in a situation for the pleasure of watching her in it. In short, he is fascinated by Isabel in a way that Banville does not make me feel.
More seriously, in Portrait of a Lady, James slowly unveils the false nature of Madame Merle and the odiousness of Gilbert Osmond. We know these things going in this time around, whereas many of the attractive characters in Portrait, such as Ralph, are gone from the scene. With Isabel now infuriating instead of fascinating, I dread the prospect of being trapped in this story with the three of them for another 300 pages. ( )

I loved it. Marvelous pastiche of Henry James’ style. For anyone who has read Portrait of a Lady, and wanted to throttle the odious Gilbert Osmond, this is the book for you. Although Banville does provide some much needed and deserved endings to matters left unresolved by James in the original, I noted that he created a couple of new strands, just in case he is moved to bring our Isabel back again. She has become wiser and quite intrepid! ( )

He had paused on a pathway, under a trellis of vines, and was patting his pockets and frowning—he must have forgotten something at his neighbour's apartment, his cigar case, most probably, since it was a thing he frequently mislaid and left behind. He wore a pale loose linen suit and a cambric shirt with a soft collar; his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his straw hat was pushed far back at an uncharacteristically casual and what for anyone else would have been a comical angle, although it nevertheless gave to him, with his narrow face and tapering beard, the look of one of El Greco's haloed, white-clad saints. Although they were separated only by some yards, he would not yet have seen her, so bright was the sunlight surrounding him and so dimly shadowed the doorway within which she stood. She made no sound or movement, only stayed still and watched him. He was usually so sharply self-aware a man that, caught there in the glare of noonday and not knowing he was observed, he appeared to Isabel unwontedly a figure of the ordinary sort, distracted, agitated, vexed both at his own forgetfulness and the stubborn way that supposedly inanimate, taken-for-granted things have of making themselves furiously elusive. (p.275)
Ah... Henry James. You either love the style of this great American novelist—designed to catch, with immense, with fiendish, subtlety, and in sentences of labyrinthine intricacy, the very texture of conscious life—or you hate it. There are 208 words in that excerpt, and we agree, I am sure, that nothing has happened, and this paragraph goes on for a page and half, and still nothing happens. What is truly remarkable about John Banville's 'sequel' to James' The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is that his style in Mrs Osmond so faithfully replicates James's style and yet remains so readable.
It's playful too. Isabel Archer is one of the great disappointments in 19th century fiction: her assertive independence fizzles out in Europe when she learns of her husband Gilbert Osmond's perfidy and it's not clear whether she goes back to him or not. Oh please! we thought, when we read Portrait of a Lady in our younger years, bring on the feminist literature project and let us have female protagonists with some intelligence and gumption. Banville plays with us all through Mrs Osmond... what is this rich (enormously rich) young woman going to do to salvage her life?

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/06/15/mrs-osmond-by-john-banville/ ( )