Glasses

A young artist spends a summer at the Folkestone seaside, where he becomes fixated on Flora Saunt, a beautiful young woman whose radiance seems to cast a spell over everyone around her. Through his painter's eye, we watch Flora move through the social world of the resort, surrounded by admirers and presided over by the formidable widow Mrs. Meldrum. But what begins as an artist's fascination with a striking face gradually reveals something darker: Flora's beauty is a kind of weapon, wielded with instinctive self-absorption, and her position in society is more precarious than it appears. James, in his characteristic style, traces the delicate negotiations between men and women, between looking and being seen, between the desire to possess a vision and the danger of being consumed by it.