by Henry James
First published 2002
Lambert Strether arrives in Paris with a clear mission. He must convince young Chad Newsome to abandon his involvement with a French woman and return to America. Strether comes as an emissary from Chad's family, carrying their expectations and moral certainties across the Atlantic. But Paris works its changes on the aging idealist. The city's sophistication challenges his assumptions about right and wrong, duty and desire. As Strether observes Chad's transformation and encounters the woman he was sent to condemn, his own convictions begin to shift. The man who came to rescue another from European corruption finds himself questioning everything he believed about how life should be lived. Strether faces a choice between the safe path of obligation and the uncertain road of personal awakening. His famous declaration that one must "live all you can" becomes more than advice to others. It becomes the principle that will determine whether he returns to his old life or embraces the possibilities that Paris has revealed.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, 19th-century, academic
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, moral-ambiguity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Paris
Period: 19th-Century
352 pages · Paperback · Dover Publications