What Maisie Knew

What did Maisie know? At first, not much. She is only six years old when her mother and father divorce. Sharing custody, her embittered parents use the child as a pawn in their battles with each other. Neglected and exploited, Maisie sees and hears her parents' adulterous affairs, their remarriages, and their utter immaturity and selfishness, hastening her advance from childhood to precocious maturity. Not just a tale of innocence corrupted, What Maisie Knew sparkles with dark humor and savage wit. Henry James takes particular aim at the mores of the English upper classes in his tale of a sensitive girl and her spirited reaction to thoughtless, selfish adults. Written in an era when divorce was far less common than it is today, this 1897 novel is strikingly modern. The story of the sensitive daughter of divorced, irresponsible parents, What Maisie Knew has great contemporary relevance as an unflinching account of a wildly dysfunctional family.