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A review by galaheadh
The Turn of the Screw: And Other Stories by Henry James
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.