Henry James' Midnight Song

By Carol de Chellis Hill

Book Overview

The Setting: Fin de si cle Vienna - a society of almost unprecedented vitality, enlivened by new movements in music, art, fashion, literature, psychology, and love. Yet Vienna is a society on the edge of chaos. Beneath the glittering surface it seethes with conflict and ethnic tension. Divided by anti-Semitism, racism, feminism, sex, and the denial of sex, it is a society remarkably similar to our own. The Plot: The women of Vienna are dying - some by murder, some by suicide. During Dr. Freud's absence in Paris, a body is found in his study but disappears as quickly as it was discovered. Was there really a murder or was it merely hysteria on the part of Freud's wife and sister-in-law? How does this body fit into the recent epidemic of women's mysterious deaths in Vienna? Into the web of deceit, murder, and social upheaval step a variety of "real" characters, each with something to hide, who become suspects in the case: the distinguished novelist Edith Wharton, who comes to Vienna to engage in a passionate illicit affair; her friend and traveling companion Henry James, who has consulted Freud about his own secret trespasses; Freud's colleagues Dr. Jung and Dr. Fliess; and Jung's patient-lover, Sabina Spielrein. Drawn into the plot as well are the Mains, the family of an American businessman, along with Police Inspector LeBlanc, who arrives from Paris to pursue the strange case amid mounting anti-Semitic desire to lay blame for the murders at the door of Jews. Will the inspector solve the murders before a riot ensues? The Novel: Is fiction, as Henry James says, just the other side of history? Is Vienna in 1900 merely a stage on which the same tensions that haunt American society today are being given a dress rehearsal? Are we, like the Viennese of 1900, suffering from fin de si cle syndrome? Is there such a thing? Combining the historical imagination of Ragtime with the intellectual audacity of Flaubert's Parrot, Henry James' Midnight Song brilliantly blends history and fiction in a fast-moving, breathtakingly original novel of ideas.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393312291
• ISBN13: 9780393312294
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.1" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Dark and Stormy Nigh

Black horses gallop through the streets of Vienna in the dark of night. The Countess Bettina Von Gerzl proclaims "I do not want to lead a tragic life." A young girl yearns to be portrayed in a Henry James novel. A body is discovered in and then goes missing from Freud's sitting room. Could it be Hysteria? Black horses gallop in the dead of night. Edith Wharton takes a journalist as a lover. Carl Jung takes a patient as a lover. Henry James strangles his cat? [clip clop; clip clop; clip clop; CLIP CLOP] Emperor Franz Josef broods about why the women of Vienna seem to be killing themselves. Murder? One? Twelve? Galloping black horses. Deceit. Vengeance. Scandal. "We are not who we pretend to be." "Oh I AM someone. I am. I AM someone." Fin-de-siecle

Secrets of the Fin-de-siecle!

This is an amazing fictional exploration of a very explosive, talented, and contradictory era and place. That is Vienna, Austria at the turn of the century. Hanging over this whole novel is the question of how a city of beauty and imagination could have also been a hotbed of rampant and violent anti-semitism. But what truly sets this novel apart is its brilliant re-creation of the figures of this age: Henry James as a secret reader of potboilers; Edith Wharton the secret writer of pornography; Carl Jung's indiscretions with female patients; and Sigmund Freud's early failures. The author Hill, is at the top of her game though in inverting the Freudian theories of "female hysteria" and the women characters are strong and appealinq.

An informative and suspensful masterpiece!

I wasn't too sure what to expect when I picked up this book at a friend's recommendation. Not having been a Henry James fan, the title simply turned me off. As soon as I'd finished the first two pages, I knew I wasn't going to be able to put this book down without some sort of physical threat to my well-being. Aside from being an exquisitly written novel, it's filled with factual information and characters, social commentary (as applicable to our time as to turn of the century Vienna,) and truely haunting suspense. Plus, it's a bit difficult these days to find a book with truely likeable characters. Hill creates colorful portraits of sometimes bleak historical figures (i.e. Sigmund Freud, Edith Wharton, Carl Jung, and of course Mr. James) with a fabulous array of (possibly) fictional characters that you can't help but feel admiration, adoration, and/or sympathy for. Hill's range of styles and points of view are wonderfully displayed in this fine work that you could read again and again, learning something new everytime.

Amazing! Very captivating

This book takes you in and interweaves you inside a complex mystery in which no one will ever really know the truth. Questions our notion of mastery and delivers the unexpected. Read this!