A review by lindseysparks
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories by Henry James

4.0

Henry James has a reputation for being a master at short fiction for a reason. Five of the six stories in this collection were a delight.

An International Affair – my favorite of the bunch. It’s a surprisingly funny story about an American woman obsessed with the British, who meets a Lord and visits England. I particularly liked the scenes where she wants to sightsee and go to places like the Tower of London and Hampton Court and everyone’s like why do that when you can socialize??? The descriptions of those places and London in general made me want to go back.

Daisy Miller – I read this in college and remembered liking it more than I did this time, but I think that’s partly because I liked An International Affair so much and these have some similarities, and I wasn’t as surprised this time, obviously.

The Aspern Papers – This one reminded me of Finders Keepers by Stephen King. When you have something with scholarly value, do you have an obligation to share it? Even if it’s of a personal nature? Is it wrong to destroy something that could have historical or scholarly value? Is it wrong to deceive someone to try to save such an item?

The Altar of the Dead – This is the one I didn’t like. Maybe you need to be Catholic to really get what is going on, since the story revolves around lighting candles for the dead. I just didn’t get what was going on. I even re-read the majority of it once the major twist happened, because I could tell it was supposed to be a twist but I didn’t really get why. I don’t feel like it explained it very well and the two main characters obsession with showy grieving just bugged me.

The Turn of the Screw – Arguably James’s most famous novella/short story. I read this on Halloween. It wasn’t quite as creepy as I hoped, but I would get creeped out every time I looked at the scary children on the cover of my edition. Going in I assumed the children were who I should be scared of, like some sort of Children of the Corn thing or something. I did not expect to make two Stephen King references in this review, although thinking about they weirdly do have some similarities. I appreciate the psychology here and that he left what happened up to interpretation.

The Beast in the Jungle – The actual story was kind of boring but at the same time it was an excellent illustration of not throwing your life away in search of something. We often put so much focus on searching for meaning or purpose that we miss what is right in front of us.