Henry James’ modernist masterpiece, The Awkward Age, was published in 1899, four years after he was booed off the stage at the premiere of his play, Guy Domville. Drawing on his experience as a playwright, James purged the demons of failure by composing The Awkward Age mostly in dialogue.

In this intricate novel, the characters reveal themselves through words. They speak urbanely, indirectly, sometimes falsely:  what is too indirect and verbose for the stage works in a novel. 

At the center of the novel are Mrs. Brookenham, nicknamed Mrs. Brook, and her 20-year-old daughter Nanda.  Mrs. Brook is a beautiful, savvy, seductive woman who entertains the wittiest society people in her salon, and manages to be charming when she talks about them behind their backs. Nanda is a free spirit who has many different kinds of friends: she spends time with Tishie, an unhappy woman whose husband has left her, and Aggie, a young woman so pure and sheltered she knows nothing about sex.

 But Mrs. Brook fears sexual competition with Nanda.  When she finally decides to allow the lovely 20-year- old to go about freely in society, she pretends to her friends that Nanda is 18 instead of 20:  Mrs. Brook wants no one to know her own age, 41. 

The two most important male characters, who are on the surface almost non-sexual, are both under the Brookenham women’s spell.  Though witty, smart, charming Mr. Vanderbank (Van) is the secret lover of Mrs. Brook (it takes a while to intuit this), he also admires Nanda. When Mrs. Brook and Van discuss Nanda’s future, Mrs. Brook reveals her jealousy.  “Are you ‘really’ what they call thinking of my daughter?”

Van reminds her that since Nanda has been allowed to come and go freely, he and Mrs. Brook have “put their heads together over the question of keeping the place tidy… for the female mind.”  And Mrs. Brook says she feels inhibited by Nanda.  “…Good talk: you know – no one, dear Van, should know better – what part that plays for me.  Therefore when  one has deliberately to make one’s talk bad – !”

And then there is another unwelcome intruder in Mrs. Brooks’ salon, Mr. Longdon, a stodgy man in his fifties, who by chance met Van at a party. Mr. Longdon has come to London to research the history of Mrs. Brook’s beautiful mother, Lady Julia, who rejected his proposal of marriage decades ago. He becomes obsessed with Nanda, because she looks exactly like her grandmother.

Mr. Longdon is an innocent, but he is also judgmental.  He shows his disapproval of Mrs. Brook:  she calls him on it. He also dislikes Nanda’s manners and free talk, but, before you know it, he has given her a reading list, been her personal docent at museums, and invited her to his house in the country.  Nanda thinks he is a “beautiful” person. Perhaps she likes him because there are no boundaries in her world, and Mr. Longdon knows the rules.

Mr. Longdon is an odd fish.  He hatches a monetary scheme that will benefit Van and, he thinks, Nanda.The scheme is a disaster. But it wasn’t actually Longdon’s scheme: Mrs. Brook’s friend the Duchess suggested it.

Nothing prepares the reader for the ending.