The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

This collection is the perfect marriage of Wharton’s keen sense of human pain and suffering and the traditional gothic or supernatural tale.

The first short, The Lady’s Maid’s Bell, focuses on the malevolent spirit of a maid who seems intent on harm to her former mistress. The Eyes, chronicles a sad, lonely man, haunted by visions of his own aged and broken visage whenever he secludes himself from human contact. And Kerfol follows a vengeful pack of ghost dogs, bent on the destruction of the jealous owner who murdered them over the affections of his wife.

Some of the stories end a bit abruptly and frustratingly vague. But such endings light the imagination’s fuse. Wharton’s weaves these ghost stories with the same dexterity show more regarding human weakness and suppressed inner pain that her classic novels of society exhibit. The resulting characters should quicken any reader’s own inner demons.

Bottom Line: Wharton at her best in a genre she is not known for.

4 ½ bones!!!!! show less

Excellent stories by Edith Wharton–most of them are ghost stories or feature other supernatural events but a few are more realistic, although they tend to have an uncanny or hallucinatory atmosphere. Wharton’s dense prose is a highlight and made all the stories enjoyable – there weren’t really any bad ones, although “The Triumph of Night” seemed longer than necessary and “The Fulness of Life” was a somewhat strange way of addressing her unsatisfactory relationship with her husband.

Wharton tends to hint at things rather than outright showing them, especially in the first story, “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”. This one is a classic haunted house story, as a new maid in an isolated country house sees her deceased show more predecessor and tries to decipher her messages. I have to admit that this one had me confused–I read it a couple times and then took to the Internet to see what everyone else thought of it. This story, along with “Kerfol” and “The Duchess at Prayer”, deals with adultery, and Wharton is highly sympathetic to possibly wayward wives. She shows the isolation and unhappiness of the wives, who have to endure their husbands leaving them for long periods of time (likely cheating themselves), and some relationships that cross over into abuse. Adultery on the male side is also a theme in “Bewitched” and “Pomegranate Seed”, although the supernatural events make these rather strange stories. Some of the other stories deal with the sad lot of various women–”Miss Mary Pask” is a lonely unmarried woman who is treated as an afterthought by her sister (this one managed to surprise me), “The Looking Glass” features an aging woman who becomes desperate as she loses her beauty, and “All Souls” is about an active, no-nonsense widow who has an eerie experience in her isolated house when she finds herself all alone. "Mr Jones" is another haunted house story, with the new owner of the house investigating the past and finding another horrible marriage. Even happy marriages are no protection: “Afterward” has a happily married woman moving to her dream house with her husband; she never pays attention to his business concerns, and eventually, some of his actions come to haunt them. Highly recommended. show less

If you like the quiet ghost stories of Henry James but could do without the run-on sentences that you have to scan three times before they become comprehensible, this collection is exactly what you're looking for. Edith Wharton was a writer of great depth and subtlety, but because she strove for clarity, she's also readable. Here you'll find masterpieces of atmosphere ("All Souls'") and of characterization ("The Triumph of Night"), as well as the occasional novelty ("Kerfol"); if you're anything like me, you'll gladly read each of them multiple times. My personal favorites are "Afterward" (generally considered Wharton's best ghost story) and "Pomegranate Seed." Laszlo Kubinyi's illustrations are eerily beautiful accompaniments to the show more tales.

Frankly, I've never understood why people are surprised that Wharton wrote ghost stories. Many authors of the first rank (Ivan Turgenev, D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald) have engaged in at least a passing flirtation with the macabre, and for some--like James and Wharton--it was an abiding interest. The perception of ghost and horror stories as illegitimate or disreputable originated with small-minded literary critics, and can now be dispensed with. show less

Edith Wharton's ghost stories read like they're written by either someone who doesn't believe in ghosts or someone who believes so strongly in them that they're trying to avoid scaring themselves. The afterword includes an excerpt that apparently didn't make it into Wharton's autobiography in which she admits to living in terror of the supernatural after nearly dying as a child, so perhaps Wharton was fearful of wandering too deeply into the unknown. The stories weren't spine-tingling for me, and I doubt they will produce chills for those who read more supernatural or horror stories than I do. Thrill-seeking readers won't find them here. Recommended mainly for Wharton completists.

Wharton's stories feature fairly well-mannered ghosts, realistic in their inscrutability but not exactly scary. Many stories started promisingly but didn't quite deliver. I most liked "Kerfol", "The Looking Glass", and "All Souls'".

"Afterward," eternally anthologized, is indeed the standout. The others creep up on something, then retreat. Remember when you bought an LP because you liked the single, then realized the single was all you wanted to hear again?

I'm not a short story fan, nor am I a horror/ghost story fan. However, I can recommend this book. Because--it's Edith Wharton. While there were a few stories I was puzzled by, or that didn't pull me in, or that were duds, in most of the stories Wharton's prose shone, the characters were well-developed, and the plots were varied and original. My favorites were: "The Dutchess at Prayer" in which an evil husband isolates his wife at an Italian country estate and, knowingly or unknowingly, seals her lover into a tomb; "A Bottle of Perrier," which is set in the middle eastern desert castle built by a medieval crusader, where the water tastes and smells terrible; and "Kesfol" where the ghosts of murdered dogs appear once a year on a Brittany show more estate.

3 1/2 stars show less