Rating: 
Summary: not for everybody
Review: There are at least two movie adaptations of James's "The Golden Bowl" that I'm aware of: a recent one (2000) with Nick Nolte and Uma Thurman (generally regarded as tiresome), and a colossally inept and nauseating BBC version from, I think, 1972. Both are wearisome, and, indeed, it is hard to see how ANY screen version could succeed: the story James has to tell is internal, psychological, and verbal; not external, visual, and action-filled. So any director who takes this material in hand will definitely have the cards stacked against him.
Er, so lemme talk about the book itself . . .
Other reviewers have complained about James's involved, ornate prose: I would definitely sympathize. Certainly, you can't have ADD if you want to tackle this book: there are hundreds of pages at a time consisting of what seems like mere wordage, without much happening.
In defense of this, I can only say that the elegance of the prose itself evokes the elegance of James's world, yet there is something sinister lurking underneath the prose; in the same way that, I submit, James is suggesting that something sinister is lurking under the superficialities of this high-hushed world. All this, of course, is symbolized by the elegant bowl itself, with its subsurface but fatal crack.
Having said that, I do think that the book is somewhat overrated. It's difficult for me, at least, to see what I have in common with or why I should care about a group of hideously rich snobs that have lived on the earth for decades without doing much good for anybody. And it's not just that: after hundreds of pages of James's dizzying verbiage, one begins to wonder if the author, despite his being able to write like an angel, had, in fact, anything at all to say. Certainly when compared to that of his peers (Conrad, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Melville -- or even Dickens) James's oeuvre -- this especially -- seems a little anemic in the "interest of subject matter" and "what he's trying to say" columns.
On the other hand, the world evoked in the book, not to mention the (verbose) manner of its evocation, is dead, dead, dead to us. That is, both the language of the book and its world come from a time that has passed from the earth utterly.
For example: the specter of adultery hangs over the novel, everything the characters think and say, in a way that is difficult to take seriously these days. Same with divorce, something which was, to these people, abhorrent and unthinkable. In the age of drive-thru wedding (and divorce) services, it's an uphill battle taking these characters' problems as seriously as they take them.
To conclude: if you're the kind of person who would be attracted to (and able to finish) this sort of book, if you have what it takes to get into this vanished world . . . well, you certainly don't need my help or encouragement.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed reaction
Review: Very long, very detailed, and a compendium of compound sentences. It's necessary to read this book during concentrated quiet time. It can be difficult to focus during a commute. James tells the story of a pair of former lovers, who are separately married to a wealthy father and his daughter. James details the relations among them before the marriage, during the betrayal, and after the discovery.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed reaction
Review: Very long, very detailed, and a compendium of compound sentences. It's necessary to read this book during concentrated quiet time. It can be difficult to focus during a commute. James tells the story of a pair of former lovers, who are separately married to a wealthy father and his daughter. James details the relations among them before the marriage, during the betrayal, and after the discovery.
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