This first novel by a young American, published originally in London (where he now lives), is in many respects a remarkable piece of work. David Plante has applied the Jamesian mood to a contemporary situation, and his success is sufficient to make "The Ghost of Henry James" a genuine tour de force—a novel of coherent and subtly developed point of view. That the novel is marred by bloodless characterizations and a certain laziness in description strikes me—in this case—as merely unfortunate, scarcely fatal.

"The Ghost of Henry James" is about a family of four brothers and a sister, not long past college age, of sufficient means to keep themselves afloat in the Jamesian "international" setting of Boston-Cambridge, New York, London and Italy….

Mr. Plante portrays the family devastatingly. We see it as a tomb, redolent of "the smell, the heavy air, and rot" of death...