I finished reading The Master. It is not a gripping book, and it should not be attempted by anyone who is not an introvert. Even introverts should check their zest for adventure at the door before poring over this one.

It's a book about Henry James, a solitary American expat in Europe; a novel based on James' life, by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín (Toe-bean). His book The South nearly swore me off reading forever, it was such an undramatic and unredeeming, existential sort of tale. The whole way through, I was thinking, He's brewing for some nasty turns, he sure is. The turn never comes: everything is genial or calm or just riddled with ennui. The Master is like that, but it's punctuated by episodes that ring nicely in the mind (particularly a youthful holiday with Oliver Wendel Holmes and some charming women), and it ends with a surprising and encouraging lightness: a family turning pages, peace through the evening and a sense of thoughts stirring.

I was tempted to read the title as a repressed critique of the James' excessively-privileged position, but it never comes through: there's a passage that puts on stage his status as master to his servants, but apparently without a critical eye, and if anything, Tóibín seems gratified by the servants' demise and the master's restored peace. I'm tempted by the memory of what that's like: not to efface yourself, but to take your privilege with grace. But the fact remains: over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day—and that's purchasing power—and lots of them are serving folk like me.

Tóibín, in both these books, seems removed to a purely aesthetic realm of the inner life, its ups and downs, and he's a master with these matters:

He read on: 'If I were, by hook or by crook, to spend next winter with friends in Rome, should I see you at all?' And then, in one of the last letters he received from her: 'Think, my dear, of the pleasure we would have together in Rome. I am crazy at the mere thought. I would give anything to have a winter in Italy.' ... He put the letters aside and sat with his head in his hands. He did not help her or encourage her ...

He sat on a chair in his living room for most of the afternoon, letting his thoughts sink and glide and come to the surface again.

In him I feel the essential pull of regret of neglected love, against the necessity of being oneself and being honest. To that extent, I find a home here. But he offers no consolation, except for the pleasures of being a master, of having a big house in the English countryside and someone to cook your dinner for you. In that, I can do without.