Volume Dial at Ten

Henry James, the legend says, was a celibate of letters, too fastidious to write desire. Garth Greenwell reads the Matcham chapter and finds the legend absurd. At an Easter house party, Charlotte and the Prince are surrounded at every hour, unable to touch, and James writes their wanting at maximum pitch: a secret signal flashed like a mirror at the sun, a consciousness that throbs and aches. Inside the rapture Greenwell catches a colder note, the moment Charlotte turns cruel about the one woman who knows their secret. And the imagery builds toward a question the novel never answers outright: what have these two actually done?