Portrait of a Lady

I've started Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, which many point to as the first of his mature works.  At about 1/3 of the way in, I must confess to not liking it all that much.  The people spend of lot of time talking in epigrams, so that I feel a bit like being in a very long-winded Oscar Wilde story, except that Wilde would have disposed of the events so far in half the space.

For now, though, I'll give James the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he's still maturing his style in these early chapters.  (The novel was originally published serially in a magazine, so that's certainly possible).