What Maisie Knew

What Maisie Knew is one of Henry James’s most daring and emotionally subtle novels, told through the eyes of a child caught between two selfish adults. Maisie Farange is passed back and forth between her divorced parents, each more interested in hurting the other than in caring for their daughter. As the adults around her manipulate, deceive, and abandon one another, Maisie gradually begins to understand the world she inhabits.

With remarkable psychological depth, Henry James explores innocence confronted by moral corruption, the quiet intelligence of childhood perception, and the emotional costs of adult irresponsibility. Both disturbing and deeply moving, What Maisie Knew is a masterful examination of growing awareness—and one of James’s most modern and unsettling works.