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The Wings of the Dove by Henry James is a marvellous and beautiful book that I love. However, it is not an easy one, even by James standards. It is one of his longest novels and perhaps even the longest, it is dense and subtle, oblique and evasive, it features some unusually nefarious main characters for James as well as fragility and innocence attacked, and it is heartbreaking. It is one of his late-period masterpieces and some say one of his best and perhaps even the best.
Milly Theale, a naive young American heiress, travels to London and soon becomes friends with Kate Croy. Kate is secretly engaged to Merton Densher, whom Milly happens to have a crush on, but Kate and Densher both have very little money. Kate discovers that Milly is somewhat sick, very possibly with an incurable and deadly disease, and concocts a devious plan - to have Milly fall in love with and marry Densher and have him inherit Milly's money when she dies in the presumably not-too-distant future, at which point he and Kate can then marry and be rich - and so pushes Densher to be especially caring towards Milly. Milly is quite unsuspecting, and unselfish as well, wanting to make others happy despite her own illness. Milly takes a sojourn to Venice - she thinks it a nice place to possibly die - and the others follow along, where Densher learns Kate's full plan and is torn about it, while Milly is falling for him and becoming sicker.
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