Reviews

The Beast In The Jungle by Henry James

emma_woolacott's review

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mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

kim_e_d's review against another edition

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Plot : John Marcher and May Bartram fall in love, but afraid of the "beast in the jungle" which resides in him, he refuses to make an offer. Years later they become friends. 

Impressions : John is a selfish jerk, and James excells at constructing those. 

kyatic's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

tastytakoyaki's review

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

lisedelabie's review against another edition

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5.0

Herlezen.

ireadandcolor's review

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2.0

Spoilers: So many fluffy words to say so little. I thoroughly enjoyed the summary I read afterwards, that took one minute to explain this novella. Not that I'm normally against words being added for flair, but this was boooooring!! It could summed up like this:

This dude met a lady and told her that he always worried that something huge and horrible was going to happen to him in his life . He was all about himself and didn't notice her as a potential partner, but as a confidant. They spoke of the potential horrible thing for years. She dies. He's sad he doesn't have a confidant. At the cemetery he sees a man who is horribly grieving about someone and it occurs to the man that the horrible thing in his life was that he didn't love anyone or anything passionately.

Moral of the story?: Fall in love with your confidant instead of being a self important asshat.

alexryan3's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A tough book to read just due to the complex prose and requires pretty close attention to the text. At times the text was so complicated it made it unenjoyable to read. However, its message is excellent and the ending hits hard. 

pixiepeach's review

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challenging emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

treiceratops's review

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5.0

A powerful parable about the paralysis of fear, this is one of the best things I have read in quite awhile.

daws_online's review

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3.0

I'm struggling to review it, because Henry James has a cool and wholly unique style of writing that I really struggle through. I'm a very detail oriented reader, I like when things are small scale and observational, and James deals in big, heady, abstracts. The entire novella, up until the last 10 or so pages, is steeped in ambiguity, even on a sentence to sentence level. The last 10 pages do kind of redeem that for me and make me look back on the story positively, but it did feel like nothing concrete happened for at least the first two chapters. The ambiguity makes sense, thematically and within the plot, but it's just not my speed.