Diana's review
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
by Henry James
Diana's review
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry James
Diana's review
rating:
bookshelves:
fantasy,
syllabus-material
recommended for: Those in need of a good ghost story; fans of Impressionism/Early Modernism
This novella is brilliant, and, due to its brevity (approximately 100 pages), a quick and easy read. James's story, centered around a young governess working in an isolated English estate who begins to see visions of malevolent ghosts, scared me more than I would like to admit. Alright I confess, I became so frightened reading it alone in my bedroom during the wee hours of the morn, that I was compelled to rush to Steve's room for a comforting cuddle (despite a fleeting paranoid thought that, in the darkness, perhaps he had been murdered and I would find myself curled up to a zombie). However, for those intellectually-minded readers who endlessly search for the hidden meanings in texts, there is definitely more to find. Is James's nameless governess actually witnessing spirits, or are they a figment of her imagination? Is her repressed sexuality, recently aroused by her reclusive employer, causing her to have hallucinations? In a gripping climax, James never ascertains what the '...more
