Mrs Osmond Author:John Banville From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, a dazzling and audacious new novel that extends the story of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, into unexpected territory. — Isabel Archer is a young American woman, swept off to Europe in the late nineteenth century by an... more » aunt who hopes to round out the impetuous but naive girl's experience of the world. When Isabel comes into a large, unexpected inheritance, she is finagled into a marriage with the charming, penniless, and -- as Isabel finds out too late -- cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond, whose connection to a certain Madame Merle is suspiciously intimate.
On a trip to England to visit her cousin Ralph Touchett on his deathbed, Isabel is offered a chance to free herself from the marriage, but nonetheless chooses to return to Italy. Banville follows James's story line to this point, but Mrs. Osmond is thoroughly Banville's own: the narrative inventiveness; the lyrical precision and surprise of his language; the layers of emotional and psychological intensity; the subtle, dark humor. And when Isabel arrives in Italy -- along with someone else! -- the novel takes off in directions that James himself would be thrilled to follow.« less