Rating: 
Summary: this book was awful
Review: It was very hard to follow and it jumped aroung a lot. I really don't recommend it. But if you like boring confusion, I say go for it.
Rating: 
Summary: slow but fascinating
Review: Modern readers might be put off by the lack of action in this short novel, but Daisy Miller is a psychological study. Daisy Miller, a young American girl, cannot navigate the social complexities of Americans in Europe. In fact, she does not even try. Daisy is her own person, with her own mind. She is a liberated woman before the phrase was ever invented. The young American man who falls in love with her fails to express his feelings because he is too concerned with what others think of her. The tale is a tragedy, with a suitably sad ending.
Rating: 
Summary: CHARMING DAISY
Review: My favorite of James' shorter works. It's sunlight and innocence and young laughter. I thought all characters rang perfectly true. For years, I got this title mixed up with "Wings of a Dove" because that's how I thought of Daisy. She was all sunshine and certainty and credulity. I loved her. I disagree it was "America vs. Europe." Wherever Daisy grew, I believe she was destined for difficulties. Her optimism, her lack of parental guidance, and her tolerance would have done her in wherever she was. This was a singularly oppresive era, it could be that if Daisy existed today, she might have lasted longer, but not appreciably. Daisy is timeless because she is unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: great example of the "unreliable narrator"
Review: Originally published in book form in 1879, "Daisy Miller" brought Henry James his first widespread commercial and critical success. The young Daisy Miller, an American on holiday with her mother in Europe, is one of James' most vivid and tragic characters. Daisy's friendship with an American gentleman, Mr Winterbourne, and her subsequent infatuation with a passionate but impoverished Italian, bring to life the great Jamesian themes of Americans abroad, innocence versus experience, and the grip of fate. This story emphasizes an upper-class expatriate's efforts to understand and deal with a charming, independent but uninformed heroine who posses a strong challenge to conservative manners. In the end the story's emphasis is not so much on social portraiture as on the tragic effects of class distinction. When Winterbourne learns that Daisy was after all completely "innocent", he understands his serious mistake in going along with the other Americans who blackball her. Like the ancient Roman spectators in the Colosseum, Winterbourne has participated in a human sacrifice. While Winterbourne worries over the morality of the young American woman, it is his own behaviour that constitutes immorality. He is committing an unpardonable sin in his overly intellectualized searching out of the moral fault of another. As in other tales, James makes direct contact with the mythic materials of Judeo-Christian culture equally to gloss his sense of evil and measure its fate in the modern world. The narrative in "Daisy" can be understood as a commentary on a culture in which gossip has replaced the gospel. In a remarkable scene set in St Peter's, as scandalizing chatter ignores and disturbs the lovely music of Spirit, Winterbourne hears from a friend that Daisy and Giovanelli have been sighted viewing the portrait by Velazquez of Pope Innocent X, a rendering that reveals the ill-named Pope as a worldly cynic. By means of this juxtaposition, James extends the evil from Winterbourne to the gossipy Americans and then to the history of European religions. The narrator is not an "unnamed hero", but has an eloquent name. Not only do Winterbourne's fate - utter stasis - and name link him to the wintry Satan of Dante; they become allegorically appropriate to his status, and emblematic of his punishment: the endless repetition, fixed in loneliness, of his self-love, which is encompassed -"bourne" - as it is "born" by winter. The only motion available to Winterbourne is the futile beating of wings that immures him and the more fixedly in an ice that represents his fear and hatred of others. The role of Evil in this tale is less that of pointing out at narcissism (though it is also clearly about that), and more about the terms for living in a modern world where all comforting authority has been lost. The freedom in this tale is a terror rather than a liberation for the characters who confront it, and leads them to an attempt to impose meaning on a recalcitrant world that leads in turn to the violation of others. Because Winterbourne will not live with the challenge of self-awareness required in a world where we are alone, he loses respect for Daisy and he learns nothing. His confusion between his parenting and courting roles, and his panic of the social "other", make him lose trust in her individual strengths. This story defines an evil fit for the century of Henry James and for our own. James' later story "The Beast in the Jungle" is a reworking of the same theme.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece miniature.
Review: Read heading a collection of James short stories, 'Daisy' is a delight, with a classically clear narrative, beautifully direct prose (especially if you've come from the late novels!), a charming heroine, and a sublime balancing act between unexpected comedy (the great Randolph C. Miller!) and the most horrifying tragedy. Puffed up as a 'novella', however, with an introduction (Geoffrey Moore) almost as long, and copious notes (Patricia Crick), and the poor girl is left a little exposed. Maybe my feeling of relative disappointment, having fallen in love over ten years ago, was due to this infuriating critical apparatus, the introduction patronising James, the notes condescending to the reader. What strikes me now as the work's brilliance is not the concise treatment of the America/Europe, man/woman, appearance/reality, Geneva/Rome dialectic that so obsessed James; or even the astonishing achievement of the narration, somehow distancing and conflating the narrator and his silly hero. What is especially striking is the visual quality, the minutely composed tableaux - now Gothic, now impressionistic, now sharply lucid - as an abortive love affair is played out on the placid shores of Lake Geneva, the rondelay of the Pincio Gardens, or the ruins of ancient Rome, malaria poisoning the air on its way to Venice and Thomas Mann.
Rating:
Summary: The Unreliable Narrator-An American Specialty
Review: The unreliable narrator is here in his full glory. I say "his" because in Daisy Milller, the masculinist bias of the narrator is the only reason for the story to exist. There is no plot. The standard critical drivel about "American" vs "European" girls is absurd. Since when does a comparison of national "types" become profound? (Another example of missing the forest for the trees is the idea that The Great Gatsby is about the "Midwest" vs. "The East" Idiotic. It too is about an unreliable narrator -- one so unreliable he can charm, disarm and deceive the average reviewer -- more than 50 years after the book was written. The Great Gatsby is not about the American Dream [if there ever was one], but about the ramblings of a sociopathic narrator straight from the troubled mind of Fitzgerald). Those "reviewers" who talk about this novella being "boring" and "confusing" are absolutely right. It is. But James intended it to be. Why? James is the master of the mind f&$%. That is his chief artistic gift. Want a good example of how a young man's horniness, self-absorption, self-pity and rationalization can totally color his view of women? And how self-important masculinist reviewers can totally buy into this without realizing it? Because they have the same problem? That is Henry James' little trick. James always gets the last word.
Rating: 
Summary: not exactly the best book in the world
Review: this was one of those books that begin with a kick-butt opening(not really...but i liked it) however it all changes in the middle...and the ending was one of the corniest endings i have ever seen in my life....i can't figure out if it was supposed to be a romance novel or what...one of the strong points of the book was the whole idea of flirting...it showed how society reacts...and this appeals to today's society as well, even in America....well if ur trying to figure out whether to read the book or not...read it...until u get bored that is
Rating:
Summary: boring
Review: Very big words, no story, no action. The only reason I give it two stars because it's short.
Rating:
Summary: needs brainstorming afterwards
Review: When I first finished reading the book, I did not know what to make of it. The story appeared so simple,common and almost soap-opera like. After reflecting back on it though (especially considering the time it was written), I found it quite courageous and interesting. I also realized that the same kind of judgemental society does still exist perhaphs more so at more wealthy circles.
I sympathized with Daisy'scharacter for she portrays a naive, free-spirited, innocent young woman who is trying to find herself without much parental help. She also seems very confused and bored, not knowing what to do with herself and her money. At times, I wanted to yell at the mother to guide her daughter out of this confusion. I hope we are doing better jobs today to guide our daughters when they need us and show them different choices that will take their boredom go away and make them long for additional interests and not only for the company of "gentlemen friends', as Daisy puts it.
We will be discussing this book at our book club in a few weeks and I can't wait to hear what others thought of the book.
Rating:
Summary: needs brainstorming afterwards
Review: When I first finished reading the book, I did not know what to make of it. The story appeared so simple,common and almost soap-opera like. After reflecting back on it though (especially considering the time it was written), I found it quite courageous and interesting. I also realized that the same kind of judgemental society does still exist perhaphs more so at more wealthy circles.
I sympathized with Daisy'scharacter for she portrays a naive, free-spirited, innocent young woman who is trying to find herself without much parental help. She also seems very confused and bored, not knowing what to do with herself and her money. At times, I wanted to yell at the mother to guide her daughter out of this confusion. I hope we are doing better jobs today to guide our daughters when they need us and show them different choices that will take their boredom go away and make them long for additional interests and not only for the company of "gentlemen friends', as Daisy puts it.
We will be discussing this book at our book club in a few weeks and I can't wait to hear what others thought of the book.
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