The Turning

I still am not sure what the story was about?! I was left very confused. The format of the story was terrible. The letters did not work for this story. The story went off the beaten path way too many times. The only good thing I can say is that the story was short. I would not recommend this to anyone. ( )

Jack's summer job is to hang out with two eerily well-behaved children on an isolated island--no TV, phones, internet, cell service, nothing. Despite his early misgivings about the job (including the seagull screaming at him to turn back on the ferry over), he enjoys it--but there's still something weird. Then he starts seeing the man. And then the red-haired woman from the ferry. And then learns that they're both dead, and the mysteries keep on coming.

A retelling of The Turn of the Screw (which I haven't read), this has all the flavor of a gothic horror/ghost story, a good choice for the Halloween season. Easy read-alikes are the source material, Shirley Jackson, Long Lankin, and The Shining, as we see Jack uncover more and more of the island's history and his slow personality shift. Would recommend to 8th grade and up looking for something creepy for the gloomy fall nights. ( )

A young man takes a job as a nanny to two young children at their family home on a remove island. He senses that something is not quite right with the house, or with the children. He begins to see shadows and figures on the grounds and in the house, but he is unsure if they're real or if they're all a part of an elaborate plot to drive him insane.

This book reminds me of the Turn of the Screw in terms of plot, but little else. I know it's a YA book, but the writing was really bad. It's written in epistolary form, as the main character, Jack, writes letters to his girlfriend back home and, occasionally, his father. It failed, however, to match the dread and fear of the original. The characters fell flat and were simply one-dimensional copies of the original. This was, perhaps, due to the jocular tone of the letters. Jack's tone was one of dismissive nonchalance, half-joking and book-ending the incidents he experienced with unimportant details of his day, and questions about life back home. Perhaps this was Prose's attempt to imitate the voice of a teen boy, but it succeeded, at least for me, in removing the sense of terror and rapidly diminishing sanity that made the original so powerful

It's hard to rate this book, because it really does read like a Y.A. book, and not a particularly well-written one at that. And the ending...gah...the ending.

My advice: if you like The Turning of the Screw, do NOT read this book. ( )

When I was in High School we had to read Turn of the Screw for my Gothic Literature class. I loved the novel because we had to figure out if the main character was crazy or if something paranormal was occurring (I thought she was crazy). I was so excited when I found out that Francine Prose was writing a retelling of the story called The Turning.

The Turning posses the same qualities that makes the original story so awesome—the question of the character’s sanity. While I do still think that Jack from The Turning is out of his mind, I had a harder time deciding if he was crazy. While there are so many events that make me think he is a basket case, there were a few instances where I had to admit to myself that Jack might be right about the things that occurred on the island.

It is so tempting to launch into a critical analysis of each spooky aspect of the book and explain why I think Jack is insane. However, it is obviously impossible to do that without ruining the book for those who have not read it. Suffice it to say that The Turning is an excellent novel and perfect for fans of unreliable narrators. ( )

A retelling of Henry James' Turn of the Screw. Jack decides to take a job babysitting 2 kids on an isolated island for the summer, to earn enough money to go to the same college as his girlfriend. As her writes letters to her, he reveals strange mysteries surrounding the children and the house; the children are often secretive and seem to be communicating with each other through glances, he finds out what happened to the previous babysitter, and he starts to see ghosts. This makes him increasingly paranoid about his relationship back home and with the kids. Eventually he falls into a fever, making it up to the reader to decide if he's just hallucinating or really interacting with a ghost. ( )