The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

[Jen]

I felt similarly. I think I gave it either 3 or 3.5 stars too

[Kristel]

I reread this book in October, 3.5 stars; My second read of this novella by Henry James (1898). A classic horror story about a young woman who goes to a lonely place to care for two young children. A young lady of 8 and a young lad of 14. The woman goes because she is attracted to the man (uncle of the orphans) who asks her even though he tells her that it is secluded spot and she must never, ever contact him if she takes the job. Once there, she is delighted with the children and the spot but soon she is seeing specters of the previous governess and a man. Then she thinks the children are in collusion with these specters. Is this a story of ghosts, is it a story of bad children or is this the story of a insane governess? The reader must decide. The story is about parental neglect smothering maternal concern.

[Jamie]

My review: I have not liked any of Henry James's books so far, so the best I can say for these stories is that they are short. James is fond of drawing out simple sentences into page-long run-ons that somehow manage to say even less than the simple sentence they probably derived from. The Turn of the Screw was supposed to be suspenseful. It has ghosts, creepy children, and a poor young lady almost all alone in an isolated country house. The ghosts were even, at least according to the lady, 'evil-intentioned'.
Any momentum this story might have had from the ghosts and the creepy children was drained almost immediately by the storytelling style of the author. The children seemed just bored, not creepy, the ghosts just stood around looking at stuff, and not much ever actually happened to get worked up about, so that without the governess telling us there was great evil afoot, there'd be no reason not to think it was just a boring country house where not much happened besides a boy getting expelled and being stuck at home for a bit with a governess and his sister.
I did eventually find a way to approach this novella, though, that allowed me to almost enjoy it by the end- I decided to just assume the young lady governess narrating the tale was an undiagnosed schizophrenic. Thus the ghosts were not real, the children were not unnaturally creepy, and the only source of evil or unnaturalness was in the governess herself and her perception of her surroundings. And, when the boy dies at the end, he is not dead because he is no longer possessed, as she says, but because she has smothered him. A more modern reading perhaps, but it got me through the book and was actually an internally consistent reading. I highly recommend this approach if you are struggling with this story.

[Sushicat]

How did you rate it?

[Jamie]

Sushicat wrote: "How did you rate it?"

I rated the overall collection I read at 3 stars, so Turn of the Screw would be closer to 2.5 or 2 stars, I think. I read a 4-story collection, since that's the edition that turned up on the community free-bookd shelf. Needless to say, this was not a favorite 1001 Books title for me, but at least it is done, and checked off at last. :)

[Diane]

FYI - The link to this string of reviews doesn't work - it just takes you back to the list of reviews.

Rating: 3 stars

I re-read this book hoping I would appreciate it more than I did the first time, especially since I usually enjoy Gothic horror. My views, however, did not change. I did not find it as creepy as other readers and found it anticlimactic overall. Like, Jamie, I haven't been all that impressed by James' work. I do like the fact that it is up to the reader to decide what is really going on in the story.

[Diane]

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
First published in 1898.
3/3 stars

“If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children-?”

This was a short read. I thought this was a ghost story before I read it and I still think that after. I did not get a sense of mental illness with any of the characters. From what I read about the book, the controversies of the day would have been from the class distinctions not being followed. This is my first Henry James book and I enjoyed his writing. Henry James is known for his unreliable characters and interior monologues and I would say that this book fit that description.

[Chinook]

3 stars

So at first, I had a vague sense I’d read this, but I think I was just recalling The Rocking-horse Winner by Lawrence. I didn’t love it - Glimpses of the Moon by Wharton was the previous book I read before this and though it was twice as long I flew through that one. This was a bit of a slog for the first half, which is saying a lot considering the short length. By the end I was interested in watching the governess losing her mind rather than in the idea of it being a ghost story. And the framing story at the beginning felt like a waste of time - what did that add???

[Celia]

A classic gothic mystery.

Ghosts-are they real or imagined.

The book came alive for me because of the outstanding reading voice of Emma Thompson. Before I started the audible, the book was OK at best. Now... 5 star!!

[Gail]

This is my third reading of this classic “ghost” story by Henry James. My first reading was at the age of 12, in my parents summer cabin during a stormy night. Could you ask for a better setting for this short novella? I remembered it only vaguely and what I remembered was that it was frightening because it was so vague. The dead ex-governess and ex-butler were dead yet very evident in the story. The children were the epitome of pure goodness or was that a front to clothe their evil relationships? The main character, the governess, was not a reliable narrator but what was she? I remember the frustration of not being able to ask anyone exactly what happened but I also remember the fright.
My second reading, quite a bit later, took a more scholarly turn in which I read many reviews that turned it into a psychological thriller with British class overtones about an insane governess.
This third reading, for my Random Challenge 2021, took me back to the ghost story. James is simply brilliant in making this story completely ambiguous, with sudden appearances of strange apparitions, children that may or may not be manipulating a completely naive and hopelessly inept governess, and a haunting death that has no definitive cause. Yes, James will use more words and phrases and sentences piled up together than most any modern reader can bare but this time I was with him. Yes, still vague but also still frightening for someone that was once a 12 year old reading ghost stories in the night.

[Valerie]

read Sept. 2024

Oh my, Henry….. why oh why? I thought trying a short gothic horror novella by Henry James was something I might not mind. Sadly, I was wrong. James managed to use such convoluted language to tell a relatively simple story that totally gets in the way of the (apparent) supernatural horror. The real horror here is his writing. Frankly, I am surprised that so many of James’ works are on the 1001 list. He is just plain terrible at writing. For the premise and the interesting elements of the story – 2*.