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Loading... The Turn of the Screwby Henry James
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. What a strange strange story. I seem to be reading a lot of them lately. Another shorter tale of a governess coming to a house that has a spooky history and trying to save the lives of herself and the children. Easy to read in one sitting/day despite its obscurity. After getting a couple chapters in the story started to become more clear and interesting. Although, at the end, I was still curious and felt I could have used more information. blondierocket | Jun 28, 2009 |   I enjoyed pondering on the various critical readings of the this story as much as I enjoyed the tale itself - straight ghost story or psychological portrait of a disturbed woman? (  )tattie-bogle | Jun 9, 2009 | TURN OF THE SCREW is Henry James's most famous ghost story. Set on an English estate, Bly, the narrator has been hired as governess for two young orphans, Miles and Flora. The previous governess, Miss Jessel, and Peter Quint, the valet of the children's uncle, had died under mysterious circumstances, and their ghosts may have returned to reclaim the children. The tale is highly ambiguous as the reliability of the narrator is in question. Are there really ghosts or is she mad? The tale was written in 1898, and the repressed Victorian sensibility of the narrator seems a bit quaint even for the time -- but perhaps that was part of James's technique of character development. I saw the film THE INNOCENTS, based on the story and starring Deborah Kerr, when I was a young teenager and was more frightened than I had ever been in a film -- the memory stays with me to this day, at least 45 years after I saw it. (  )janeajones | Apr 12, 2009 | Great book if you want to learn something about criticism. The ending can be read many different ways, and it leaves you guessing. I thought this book was going in a different direction than it did. I really thought that the children were evil, but everyone else in my class thought the nanny was (just goes to show you my favorite genre...). (  )lalaland | Mar 5, 2009 | 1  A suspense novel........a thriller..........and eloquent writing! A spectacular ending which left me speechless (a rare occurrence!)! Great book! ( )hemlokgang | Mar 4, 2009 | 0.045 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 039395904X, Paperback)The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharing ghost stories 'round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the guests tells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernatural visitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychological ambiguity. Only the young governess can see the ghosts; only she suspects that the previous governess and her lover are controlling the two orphaned children (a girl and a boy) for some evil purpose. The household staff don't know what she's talking about, the children are evasive when questioned, and the master of the house (the children's uncle) is absent. Why does the young girl claim not to see a perfectly visible woman standing on the far side of the lake? Are the children being deceptive, or is the governess being paranoid? By leaving the questions unanswered, The Turn of Screw generates spine-tingling anxiety in its mesmerized readers.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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