Nuns Don't Throb

A single word migrates in Book Fifth of The Golden Bowl, from the prince to his wife, and Garth Greenwell catches it on the first page. It is proof, he argues, that Maggie's transformation is erotic before it is strategic. He hears what her strange new certainty does to Fanny Assingham, the one person she can still talk to. He insists, again, that this is a novel without villains, even now. And then he watches an evening of cards at Fawns become the quietest duel Henry James ever wrote: Charlotte at the window, Maggie beside her, and a victory that looks, from every angle, like losing.