The Awkward Age by Henry James, Fiction, Literary

THE AWKWARD AGE is a tale of love, connivance, and circles inside circles: it is the tale of Nanda Brookenham, a young society woman whose attempts at marriage are foiled by various members of her mother's social circle -- and, ultimately, by her own mother. Nanda's manipulative mother, Fernanda, is the hostess of a fashionable London salon. Nanda is befriended by the elderly Mr. Longdon -- an old-fashioned man enters a tangled web of wealthy British fashionable types, makes a proposal. . . . The two women both appear to love Gustavus Vanderbank, a young government employee, who becomes alienated from them. The relationship between Vanderbank, a complicated but good-natured young man who has managed to penetrate that affluent circle, and Nanda Brookenham, the granddaughter of Longdon's lost love dominate the tale powerfully and compellingly. . . .