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Summary
Summary
A modern retelling of The Golden Bowl by Henry James for fans of Sally Rooney and Kate Atkinson.
From their grand mansion on the Upper East Side to their magical private island in Long Island Sound, everything points to the Woodford family as being perfect and idyllic. Why, then, is there such tension in the air?
Enter Federico, a penniless Italian prince who is about to marry Emily Woodford, the only child of the family's widowed patriarch, Henry. When Emily's beautiful, enigmatic childhood friend, Christina, appears on the scene as a guest at their wedding, trouble begins, for she and the Prince once had a passionate affair. Henry, however, is also enchanted by Christina. Now both Emily and her father must face a new reality, and learn whom they can, or cannot, trust.
Author Notes
Dinitia Smith is the author of four previous novels, including The Illusionist , which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her short stories have been published in numerous magazines. For eleven years, she was a reporter at the New York Times where she wrote on literary topics and intellectual trends. Smith has won many awards for her writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She is also an Emmy Award winning filmmaker. Her drama, Passing Quietly Through , was chosen for the New York Film Festival, and shown at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A retelling in contemporary Manhattan of the romantic quadrangle from Henry James' The Golden Bowl. Like James, Smith opens with a prenup, signaling the tangle of relationships that antedate the marriage in question. Henry, a wealthy widower, is giving away his only daughter, Emily, to Federico, an Italian prince with few euros to his name. Federico, unbeknownst to Emily, preceded their romance with a serious affair in the arms of Christina, who knew Emily in boarding school and is invited to her wedding. Not coincidentally, Christina and Henry eventually connect and marry, while she and Federico reopen their affair. Even married, Emily remains deeply attached to Daddy, who buys her and the prince a house three blocks from his own Manhattan mansion. "Are you with me so far?" as the Eagles ask in "Life in the Fast Lane." The plot moves inexorably toward the discovery of infidelity, borrowing "some of the storyline and the structure" of the James masterwork, as Smith writes in an endnote. She avoids James' painstaking psychological dissections in favor of mullings in the close third person. And she largely avoids letting this frazzled quartet's shenanigans degenerate into soap opera. But the novel suffers from repetitions, clunky prose, and a tendency to tell rather than show. Emily's "full" breasts appear three times over five pages. Two women have "immaculate" posture (Christina and Federico's mother--hmm). Emily, speaking of Daddy, refers to "the immeasurable greatness of his soul" and a few pages later to "his great, all-knowing arms." Pity the prince: "Around Henry, Federico was literally tongue-tied." Henry has other problems: He has "no function," "no skills, no talents," "no job, no obligations." Some of this reflects a lack of subtlety, not least in Smith's update of James' symbolic golden bowl as a Roman jar for collecting tears. A story of rich potential that falls short in the execution. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Frederico, an Italian prince, is about to marry into the wealthy Woodford family in contemporary New York City. His bride-to-be, Emily, still lives at home with her father, Henry, with whom she's extremely close. Before Frederico met Emily, he had a passionate relationship with her school friend Christina in Rome. Much to his surprise, Emily insists on inviting Christina to their wedding--she has no idea that the two were ever together. Frederico manages to get through the wedding, but once married into the Woodford fortune, he finds himself bored and aimless in a life dictated by his wife and her father. After Christina unexpectedly joins the family on their summer holiday on their private island, she and Henry are soon engaged and she becomes a daily part of Frederico and Emily's lives. With thoughtfully drawn characters, Smith's (The Honeymoon, 2016) novel is an exploration of passion, intimacy, and deeply entwined relationships. Written partly as an homage to Henry James' The Golden Bowl, it will appeal to readers of modern literary domestic fiction.
