James writes these great 30-50 page short stories and this would have been wonderful as one of those.
Unfortunately, it was a 400 page novel and the elegance of the writing and the moments of real humanity in the story are eclipsed by the fact that I find Henry James to be nigh unreadable. I can see what he's trying to do, but I just...would rather not spend my time on it. There are so many wonderful authors with the same capacity to depict human nature, but who don't make me want to bang my head repeatedly against the wall. Reading James is not worth it.