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clarkeylaura's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Such a strange experience, very ambiguous and abstract. Not sure if I liked it but will reflect and research more on it.
richardwiggins's review against another edition
4.0
In London people sometimes leave piles of old books outside their houses on the pavement, in case passers by want to take any of them. At least 18 months ago I found an battered copy of this book, which I have since glued and taped back together.
I’m not a reader, or at least I haven’t been until about 6 weeks ago, so tackling my first three pieces of late 19th century fiction was a tall order for me. It was a slow but pleasant experience. Some chapters whipped by, but others I had to study to take in the full meaning.
Stories one and three are linked by ghosts / apparitions. The Turn of the Screw is a genuinely scary story, though subtle in its scares. The language is formal and florid (remember I only have 20th / 21st fiction to compare this to) so you get a slow, creeping style of horror. There is never a sudden shock or revelation that you have not been prepared for. The Victorian context in which it was written is important because the scares often come when the character’s ridged ideas of “proper behaviour” and order are challenged. In that way, both this and The Third Person are radical pieces of fiction, deliberately challenging the readers idea of how society should run. Though, this third story is far, far funnier than the first and as a result was my favourite of the three. The ghost provides little menace, rather acts as a device through we can get to know two completely different distant cousins who find themselves living in an old relative’s house. You get a great odd couple dynamic, comparing their diverse reactions to the ghost.
Stories one and two are linked by troubled, precocious children with terrible parents who’s knowledge far outstrips those you’d typically see in “little charges”. The Turn of the Screw finds significant terror in slowly introducing the disobedient and manipulative elements of the children. I fully believed in the ghost throughout the book and that they had taken to instructing the children and leading them to destructive behaviours. The child in The Pupil couldn’t be more different. This sickly and brilliant 10-13 year old does everything he can to reveal to the protagonist that his parents are abusing and manipulating him. He is a tragic character the decency of whom far outstrips that of the family they have come from.
I would like to re-read these once Inam more confident with my reading and see what extra details I can pick up / further appreciation I can take from these stories. It’s definitely made me interested in dipping into some of the great gothic novels.
I’m not a reader, or at least I haven’t been until about 6 weeks ago, so tackling my first three pieces of late 19th century fiction was a tall order for me. It was a slow but pleasant experience. Some chapters whipped by, but others I had to study to take in the full meaning.
Stories one and three are linked by ghosts / apparitions. The Turn of the Screw is a genuinely scary story, though subtle in its scares. The language is formal and florid (remember I only have 20th / 21st fiction to compare this to) so you get a slow, creeping style of horror. There is never a sudden shock or revelation that you have not been prepared for. The Victorian context in which it was written is important because the scares often come when the character’s ridged ideas of “proper behaviour” and order are challenged. In that way, both this and The Third Person are radical pieces of fiction, deliberately challenging the readers idea of how society should run. Though, this third story is far, far funnier than the first and as a result was my favourite of the three. The ghost provides little menace, rather acts as a device through we can get to know two completely different distant cousins who find themselves living in an old relative’s house. You get a great odd couple dynamic, comparing their diverse reactions to the ghost.
Stories one and two are linked by troubled, precocious children with terrible parents who’s knowledge far outstrips those you’d typically see in “little charges”. The Turn of the Screw finds significant terror in slowly introducing the disobedient and manipulative elements of the children. I fully believed in the ghost throughout the book and that they had taken to instructing the children and leading them to destructive behaviours. The child in The Pupil couldn’t be more different. This sickly and brilliant 10-13 year old does everything he can to reveal to the protagonist that his parents are abusing and manipulating him. He is a tragic character the decency of whom far outstrips that of the family they have come from.
I would like to re-read these once Inam more confident with my reading and see what extra details I can pick up / further appreciation I can take from these stories. It’s definitely made me interested in dipping into some of the great gothic novels.
mitchliona's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
zom_bea's review against another edition
read turn of the screw took me forever kept falling asleep. book was falling apart and the next story was also boring me to tears. haven’t picked it up since i got it last year
galaheadh's review against another edition
FINALLY i made it all the way through a Henry James
THE most circuitous and aggravating writer I’ve subjected myself to so many times (three) on purpose. I gave up on Portrait of a Lady and the Europeans very quickly, but this one being short and super-famous gave me the strength to go on. There are four stories contained in this collection, spanning 40 years of Henry James’s career:
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Turn of the Screw is the most affecting and shocking and impressive of the four stories but it’s also the most irritating to physically read. There’s lots to like and admire about it, but my mind constantly itches to straighten it all out and make it readable – it reads so obviously to me as a style that needs *fixing* that it can never really immerse me in the story. I can't do justice to its strengths because I'm so annoyed by its style, which I suppose is my loss but whatever.
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)
This is a very slight and insubstantial sort of story, obviously written well before the other three, but the clean prose was such a breath of fresh air after Turn of the Screw that I enjoyed it probably more than it deserved. It has my favourite bit of writing from the whole four stories in it too – a nice little twisty sentence with a sting at the end that’s all the more enjoyable and effective for not going too far, and also not being directly in company with ten other similar sentences on the same page:
THE most circuitous and aggravating writer I’ve subjected myself to so many times (three) on purpose. I gave up on Portrait of a Lady and the Europeans very quickly, but this one being short and super-famous gave me the strength to go on. There are four stories contained in this collection, spanning 40 years of Henry James’s career:
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Turn of the Screw is the most affecting and shocking and impressive of the four stories but it’s also the most irritating to physically read. There’s lots to like and admire about it, but my mind constantly itches to straighten it all out and make it readable – it reads so obviously to me as a style that needs *fixing* that it can never really immerse me in the story. I can't do justice to its strengths because I'm so annoyed by its style, which I suppose is my loss but whatever.
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)
This is a very slight and insubstantial sort of story, obviously written well before the other three, but the clean prose was such a breath of fresh air after Turn of the Screw that I enjoyed it probably more than it deserved. It has my favourite bit of writing from the whole four stories in it too – a nice little twisty sentence with a sting at the end that’s all the more enjoyable and effective for not going too far, and also not being directly in company with ten other similar sentences on the same page:
On his return he had his house again thrown open, and announced his intention of keeping the same state as during his wife’s lifetime. It very soon came to be predicted that he would marry again, and there were at least a dozen young women of whom one may say that it was by no fault of theirs that, for six months after his return, the prediction did not come true.
The Friends of the Friends (1896)
As I was reading this one I thought it was cool and weird, with no great other opinion about it, but in the few days after it’s the one I’ve thought about the most and I think it's my favourite of the four – there's a real lingering mystery to it, and elegance in its execution, in a way that stayed with me. And again, nice clear writing that it doesn’t kill me to read.
The Jolly Corner (1908)
There’s a nice balance to this story – it has much more depth and introspection than the earlier two, without being such an ordeal as Turn of the Screw in terms of writing style and length. It’s aggressively psychological, but not in a bad way, and in retrospect it does go on a bit, but I didn’t get sick of it. I think I was just so pleased to be making my way to the end of the book and so felt kindly disposed to the last pages as I went through them.
The End (forever)
So in summary, third time's the charm and third time's DONE. This book was worth the read in the end, but I will not be subjecting myself to any more Henry James if I can possibly avoid it.
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
A literary tour de force. A classic ghost novella. A never-named governess goes to an old house to take charge of a little girl, Flora, and her older brother Miles, who has been expelled from school though no-one is quite sure why. The governess then starts seeing apparitions which she decides are the ghosts of valet Peter Quint and his paramour, the last governess Miss Jessel, who were considered by housekeeper Mrs Grose to have had too much influence on the children. But are the ghosts real or is the hysterical governess hallucinating? Are the children naughty or in league with devils? Why was Miles expelled (the governess tells us that the school say was was "an injury to others"; what does this mean?)? And have the children been damaged by their experiences of the ghosts when they were still alive?
The book is brilliantly written. Narrated by the governess, a classic early example of an unreliable narrator, the book is full of ambiguities that are never resolved. How, for example, did Quint and Jessel die? Miss Jessel dies while on a holiday (reading between the lines she is pregnant by Quint and dies having his baby but this is never stated). As for her lover: “Peter Quint was found ... stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained - superficially at least - by a visible wound to his head” and it is assumed he has, in liquor, slipped on the icy road but the words "superficially at least" allow the possibility that there is a more sinister interpretation
The governess is a hysterical character (although she is described as "a most charming person ... my sister’s governess ... the most agreeable person I’ve ever known in her position ... awfully clever and nice” in a frame narrative by someone who appears to have had a crush on her when he was a boy) who has immense mood swings. She is convinced that 'the master' has fallen in love with her at first sight, as she clearly has with him. One moment she believes that the children are paragons of innocent perfection and the next that they are in league with the devil. When she explains her self it is in long, convoluted and complex sentences in which words are used in unusual contexts (I wasn't quite sure is this was just Henry James whose prose style is sometimes fiendishly complicated). She repeatedly jumps to conclusions: “He was looking for little Miles ... But how do you know? ... I know, I know, I know!” (Ch 5). In dialogue she repeatedly interrupts her interlocutor and finishes their sentences for them (for example when the housekeeper, meaning Miles, says “Surely you don’t accuse him -” but before she can say what Miles shouldn't be accused of the governess says “Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me?”), thus putting words into their mouth and so validating her own opinions, whilst leaving the reader uncertain as to what they wanted to say. (All dialogue is naturalistic, so that people rarely ever make definitive statements.)
But the ambiguity is the key to this book. It is crafted with incredible care such that the reader can never be certain of the truth. The text is full of hints and clues and suggestions, but nothing is ever certain. Nothing is resolved, even at the final, climactic ending. Brilliant!
The book is brilliantly written. Narrated by the governess, a classic early example of an unreliable narrator, the book is full of ambiguities that are never resolved. How, for example, did Quint and Jessel die? Miss Jessel dies while on a holiday (reading between the lines she is pregnant by Quint and dies having his baby but this is never stated). As for her lover: “Peter Quint was found ... stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained - superficially at least - by a visible wound to his head” and it is assumed he has, in liquor, slipped on the icy road but the words "superficially at least" allow the possibility that there is a more sinister interpretation
The governess is a hysterical character (although she is described as "a most charming person ... my sister’s governess ... the most agreeable person I’ve ever known in her position ... awfully clever and nice” in a frame narrative by someone who appears to have had a crush on her when he was a boy) who has immense mood swings. She is convinced that 'the master' has fallen in love with her at first sight, as she clearly has with him. One moment she believes that the children are paragons of innocent perfection and the next that they are in league with the devil. When she explains her self it is in long, convoluted and complex sentences in which words are used in unusual contexts (I wasn't quite sure is this was just Henry James whose prose style is sometimes fiendishly complicated). She repeatedly jumps to conclusions: “He was looking for little Miles ... But how do you know? ... I know, I know, I know!” (Ch 5). In dialogue she repeatedly interrupts her interlocutor and finishes their sentences for them (for example when the housekeeper, meaning Miles, says “Surely you don’t accuse him -” but before she can say what Miles shouldn't be accused of the governess says “Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me?”), thus putting words into their mouth and so validating her own opinions, whilst leaving the reader uncertain as to what they wanted to say. (All dialogue is naturalistic, so that people rarely ever make definitive statements.)
But the ambiguity is the key to this book. It is crafted with incredible care such that the reader can never be certain of the truth. The text is full of hints and clues and suggestions, but nothing is ever certain. Nothing is resolved, even at the final, climactic ending. Brilliant!
pazfauxster's review against another edition
3.0
DNF.
The title story is so good, a sublime work of speculative fiction. However, I started losing interest soon after and didn’t finish the third and last story in the collection. The plots seemed almost repetitive and the convoluted language was unnerving me.
The title story is so good, a sublime work of speculative fiction. However, I started losing interest soon after and didn’t finish the third and last story in the collection. The plots seemed almost repetitive and the convoluted language was unnerving me.
emberreece's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.25
This definitely was not my favorite, but it might be worth revisiting later, possibly to do a queer theory reading on Turn but it was mostly slow.
alineh's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0