This book has been on my shelf for at least six years, and I tried to read it about three different times before I actually got further than 20 pages or so. There's an intensely dreamlike quality to the beginning; it's so in medias res and the way Strether thinks and talks can be so vague that I was left with a weird feeling. Reading this book is like trying to think of a word you know you know but not being able to put your finger on it. Adding to James's characteristic difficult sentence structure and that makes it fairly difficult to read, especially the long introspective passages.

Then, suddenly, in the last 100 or so pages, things that have been largely implied or subtext are suddenly talked about as if they were a given - which they are - but it is jarring, like being shaken awake. It's a masterful stylistic achievement on the whole, but I can't really say I enjoyed reading it.

I was considering writing a paragraph here about the various characters so that I can remember them when I inevitably forget 9/10ths of this book in two years, but to be honest there isn't a lot to the other characters except what Strether sees in them. He sees Chad as being marvellously changed for the better despite essentially no evidence backing that up (see: the end), he sees Sarah as being a titan and a harpy, he sees Marie as somehow otherworldly and fantastic etc. etc. but when the characters speak, pretty much everyone except perhaps the Pococks talk and act just like him, and otherwise all we have are his thoughts on them.