Why Elizabeth Bowen is no Henry James

I guess there's a reason why people - some people, anyway - still read Henry James while few people read Elizabeth Bowen; their styles are similar - generally a limited # of characters, use of dialoge to advance the plot (in both cases, dialog that does not sound like spoken dialog - it's obvious to any reader why James was a failure at theater, such a mismatch of talents and needs! - relatively little topical descriptions, and sometimes extended narrative commentary analyzing the nuances of social mores and personalities. But James at least knew how to get a plot moving and how to set high stakes for his characters, placing them in situations in which their whole life lies in the balance. Bowen's The Death of the Heart (1938), presumably an example of her style at its best, seems confident and assured and insightful, but I keep waiting for something of consequence to happen. As noted yesterday, the novel gradually comes into focus w/ the 16-year-old Portia, orphaned and pretty much unwanted, shunted around from one adult household to another, w/ the focus always on the needs of the adults, not her; but now I'm more than halfway through this (400+ p.) novel and Portia is as much of a cipher now as at the outset. She seems to be in love w/ a 23-year-old man named Eddie, who seems to me like a scoundrel who's just using her, for unclear reasons (she's not much of a "catch," from Eddie's standpoint - w/ neither money nor family), but so far all is OK between the 2: He comes to visit her during her enforced stay in an off-season coastal town and they go to a movie together and more or less act like shy preteens rather than young adults. To b a great novelist, Bowen would have to push her characters to a point of crisis or a moral dilemma, and so far in this novel I find neither, though because of the overall strength of her writing (despite some truly obscure passages in which she opines about human nature) and my interest in the fate of her main characters, I will keep reading w/ an open mind