Plante's first novel, The Ghost of Henry James (1970), was most tellingly described as sophisticated Daphne Du Maurier. It is a mannered melodrama concerning four brothers and a sister in their twenties whose worldliness is not as legitimate to them as their unrequited self-love. Its humorlessness is partially offset by Plante's informed use of Henry James's work (obscurely, The Wings of the Dove); it is built upon the literary theories of the James brothers, Henry and William, and their eccentric disciple, Gertrude Stein. What most irks is the huge contrast between the earnest philosophical and psychological theorizing, and the contrived, languidly ironical manner with which Plante pushes his cast from Rome to London to Boston—all taking, sighing, talking, from the opening scene at Henry James's grave to the closing scene when a ghost walks. Importantly, of the four brothers, one each is homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, and intellectual…. To...