"An entertaining and highly personal account of an artist's struggles with his greatest creation, charting the rhythms, people and places of James' working life. Gorra brilliantly reshapes the story of James' consummate story. To call Gorra's work a detective story; or a diary of literary tourism, as he visits James' temporary European homes in Italy, England and France; or even an intimate biography of a writer's secret development--all this only hints at the grand spectacle and suspense Gorra builds as he reveals the self-proclaimed Master at work, refashioning his legacy, rewriting his literary will, bequeathing to generations of writers the great gift of the primacy of character over plot. Portrait of a Novel thus ranks alongside Mario Vargas Llosa's examination of Flaubert's Madame Bovary as an inventive watershed in literary criticism. Gorra's exquisite commentary on James's ageless masterpiece may be as close as we get to a last word on the Master and his lonely obedience to his Muse. It is a word worth savoring.".