Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Turn of the Screw
    The Turn of the Screw
    The Turn of the Screw
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Turn of the Screw

    Written by Henry James

    Narrated by Anne Flosnik

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for Miles. But Peter Quint is dead.

    To all immediate appearances, The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story. But are appearances what they seem? A subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease, The Turn of the Screw is probably the most famous and eerily equivocal of all ghostly tales.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 5, 2009
    ISBN9781400180370
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James (1843–1916) was an American writer, highly regarded as one of the key proponents of literary realism, as well as for his contributions to literary criticism. His writing centres on the clash and overlap between Europe and America, and The Portrait of a Lady is regarded as his most notable work.

    Related to The Turn of the Screw

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Southern Gothic: Ten Essentials Books

      Sep 15, 2021

      When it comes to Southern gothic, it’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the humidity. It’s a genre designed to make you uncomfortable. The post Southern Gothic: Ten Essentials Books appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Find A New Home For Your Hauntings

      Oct 1, 2020

      Dark Moon Books editorial team promotes dark fiction by publishing multi-author anthologies and single author collections plus the occasional novel. They want ‘unusual and invigorating dark fiction’ which is ‘experimental, innovative, or progressive…

      1 min read

    • Article

      Ninth House

      Oct 9, 2019

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 450 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Leigh Bardugo Publisher Gollancz Fantasy writers were fascinated by schools and colleges long before Harry Potter caught the train to Hogwarts, and it’s fairly easy to draw up a list of th

      1 min read

    • Article

      Mexican Gothic

      Jun 17, 2020

      RELEASED 30 JUNE 299 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia Publisher Del Rey There are shades of Daphne du Maurier in this twisty little gothic novel, which pits a young woman against the horrors of a crumbling ancestral home. Our heroin

      1 min read

    • Article

      Hide

      May 18, 2022

      RELEASED 24 MAY 256 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Kiersten White Publisher Del Rey “The book you need after Squid Game!” yells the hype for Kiersten White’s latest. Well, sort of. In fact this well-written horror novel feels closer to The C

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Quiet Boy

      Jan 28, 2019

      The Quiet Boy
      29 min read

    • Article

      The Roots Of Horror

      Aug 5, 2021

      The Roots Of Horror
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West

      Dec 27, 2019

      This list of must-read crime titles forms part of a lesser-known West, an awesomely weird landscape in which the line between Good and Evil shimmers like a mirage. The post Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West appeared first on The Mill

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Joke

      Sep 1, 2020

      Although best known for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was also a prolific writer of short stories, having published his first while still a teenager. This previously unpublished story likely dates to 1950, the year The Martian Chronicle

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel

      Mar 25, 2019

      If she was home at night in her husband’s bed, did he care what she did with her days? The post ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Witness

      Jun 9, 2020

      My sister threw open the door so that it banged against the little console table she kept by the entrance. “Silas,” she said breathlessly, before even removing her coat, “I have to tell you something.” Which was enough to make me feel trapped, as tho

      25 min read

    • Article

      How we MET

      Aug 1, 2023

      How we MET
      6 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • Article

      These Bad Things

      Dec 23, 2019

      These Bad Things
      9 min read

    • Article

      Cast Out

      Jul 10, 2021

      Verity pushed back the quilts, rolled off her straw mattress onto the floor, felt for the poker, and stirred the ashes. The embers glowed. She wouldn’t have to go fire-borrowing again. Her chilled hands were clumsy. One glowing bit of wood rolled fro

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Machine Stops

      Dec 28, 2018

      The Machine Stops
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Turn of the Screw

    3.5/5

    127 ratings102 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms by Ralph KeyesPublished by Little, Brown and CompanyISBN 978-0-316-05656-4At the request of The Hachette Book Group, a TPB was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest opinion. Synopsis (from back of book): An entertaining look at euphemisms-where they come from, why we need them, and what they tell us about who we are. How did "die" become kick the bucket, "underwear" become unmentionables, and "having an affair" become hiking the Appalachian Trail? Originally used to avoid blasphemy and taboos and to make nice, euphemisms have become embedded in the fabric of our language. Euphemania traces the evolution of euphemisms from tools of the church to expressions of gentility to today's instrument of commercial, political, and postmodern doublespeak. As much social commentary as a book for word lovers, Euphemania is a lively and thought-provoking look at the power of words and our power over them. My Thoughts and Opinion: Just in time for the holidays. This book is informative, filled with trivia and a fun read. I found it to be quite interesting as to where and how certain terms came in to being such as "a loose cannon" (pg 193), "bookworm"(pg 228) "under the weather"(pg 124) and so many more. This book is perfect for those that enjoy trivia, history of the English language and the origin of certain phrases. I will never look at a chocolate chip cookie the same way again (page 111). Just in time for the holidays, this book should be on one's Christmas list, for yourself or someone you know. My Rating: 4
    • 3/5
      The antiquated grammar and long sentences makes this book a little difficult to read. However, once the cadence is mastered, the story is filled with brilliant insights. The great thing about this book is that it can be read at face value as a ghost story or more in depth as a psychological and sexual thriller.
    • 4/5
      This is one of those books that I hadn’t read despite it being mentioned pretty much every time someone called for a good ghost story. During our latest winter storm I decided it would be a good time to dive into it and for the most part I really liked it. It had excellent pacing and the story was trim, not a lot of extraneous detail. There’s the set up, which is folks gathered around a fire to hear a scary story, the prologue which puts our protagonist in place and then we’re off. Strangely the tale just ends and we never get back into the room with the fire. I wonder if James forgot or his editor or what, but those people never show up again. Kind of sloppy if you ask me.And there’s that ending. Wow. It came on extra suddenly for me because I read it as a Project Gutenberg ebook which has a lot of publishing info at the back so it’s hard to tell exactly where the book ends. Is it me, or does everyone have to read the ending three times to get it straight? And by straight I mean bendy and weird and what? Spoilers on the move - I knew it was a psychological horror story going in and that there might be more to the story than what’s on the surface. I don’t want to go so far as to declare an unreliable narrator, but it’s close. Even if what Jane perceived wasn’t real, she believed that it was and to me, that’s not an unreliable narrator, merely a fallible one. Are there the ghosts of servants past haunting the old pile, or is Jane crazy? Does Miles have some sort of symbiotic connection to Peter Quint? Does getting Flora away from the place break hers to Miss Jessel? There are no concrete answers. Instead, James relies on the reader’s interpretation of some pretty unspecific information. For example, just why are these ghosts so evil and is their evil different now than it was in life? Both are branded as villains, but nothing is specifically stated about what they did exactly. It’s hinted that there was an illicit affair going on between them, very improper, and somehow because the children were aware of it, the knowledge corrupted them. Did that lead to Miles’s unknown crime that got him kicked out of school? And speaking of unfathomable and unresolved...what’s with the uncle’s condition that Jane never contact him about the kids? That’s just weird. The whole thing is weird and that’s what makes it fun.The actual writing, I should warn you, is convoluted. James is fond of the very long sentence populated by many, many commas. At first it was a job getting into the rhythm of his writing, but reading out loud helped, something I find useful for older novels. As you might have guessed, if you’re the type of reader who needs everything explained and tied up neatly, The Turn of the Screw isn’t the ghost story for you.
    • 3/5
      I know this is supposed to be a classic psychological gothic-type mystery, but I just didn't find it very effective. Yes, there is a big scary secret revealed, but from my point of view (as a reader and movie-watcher in the 21st century), it just wasn't as unnerving as it was meant to be. Perhaps it should be viewed as the predecessor of all the psychological thrillers around today.
    • 3/5
      I've hesitated for a while now on writing this review. For one thing, I had to re-read the book. I "read" it first as a recording in my car. While that often works quite well (I highly recommend Frank Muller's reading of Moby Dick), it didn't seem to work here. I had a little trouble following the characters' motivations and felt like I was missing something. When I got to one very dramatic, tension-filled moment during a "driveway moment," I turned off my car, excited about what would happen next. When I got back into the car later, all I heard was "The End." I backed the CD up, listened to the final scene again, but that was it. Really?

      So I decided to give it another try. I'd heard that some work by Henry James is important to find in its first edition, because he made changes later in life that aren't really improvements. I checked online and looked through the 4 or 5 editions in my local library, but all the versions I found ended with the same line (I don't want to repeat the line here because it gives a major plot twist away, but I will say that the story never returns to the frame story it opens with).

      I re-read the book on my kindle, and I enjoyed it much more than the recorded version. The tension between whether the ghosts are really haunting the estate or whether the governess is making it all up (and what her motivations might be for doing so) comes through much stronger, and that's such a fascinating thread throughout the story. But I still felt let down by the ending. There's not really any foreshadowing of the event, which seems to jump out of nowhere in only the last SIX WORDS of the book. There's no explanation of what happens afterward, no denouement of any kind. It just... ends.

      So, while I liked the book as a whole, I might "Jane Eyre" this one, meaning that I'll likely invent a new ending for it in my head to feel a little more satisfied.
    • 3/5
      Tired of rereading Dracula” or “Frankenstein” (or “Harry Potter” or “Twilight”) each and every Halloween season? Looking for a new horror story to keep you company as you sip your steaming mug of spiced cider by the light of a menacing-looking jack-o-lantern? Have I got the perfect story for you: Henry James’s “Turn of the Screw.”Coming in at just under 100 pages, “Turn of the Screw” is a quick read, although it’s not the easiest. One thing is for sure, it’s a ghost story. Err—it might be a ghost story. Or, perhaps it chronicles the ravings of an off-her-rocker governess. But, still, it could be a ghost story … actually, that’s for you to decide.The story starts with friends telling each other scary stories one Christmas eve (yes, this story has dual holiday appeal). We are then thrust into the viewpoint of a young governess who accepts a job caring for a handsome bachelor’s orphaned niece and nephew—the nephew having just been expelled from his school for mysterious, unstated reasons.At the gothic estate, the governess encounters two ghost lovers on several occasions. Convinced that the children also sense and even interact with the ghosts, the governess begins to worry about their safety and puzzles over the ghosts’ intentions. The children unwaveringly declare that they have not seen any ghosts at all, but the governess does not believe them. She clings to them tightly for their own good.Much, much more transpires, but it’d be a shame to give away the shocking ending. This is a novella that you must read the full way through in order to fully appreciate.Read it with a friend or loved one. This story lends itself perfectly to discussion. Every reader will come up with a slightly different explanation as to who the ghosts are, what they want with the children, if the ghosts actually exist or are hallucinations of aforementioned governess, and even as to whether a dark sexual subtext explains it all.Try something different this Halloween season, you won’t regret it!
    • 4/5
      After reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James all I can say is "Huh”? I was looking forward to reading this old fashioned ghost story so I wrapped myself up in a quilt and curled up in my comfy chair all ready for the chills I thought this ghost story would bring, and indeed at first it was everything I hoped for. But the ambiguous ending spoiled this story for me. I wanted resolution not confusion.The story of a governess who slowly comes to realize that her charges are being haunted by the corrupt former valet, Quint and ex-governess, Miss Jessel is a fascinating one. The story builds slowly, and by the time the governess realizes that the children know full well of these ghostly apparitions, we, the readers have become aware that Quint may well have sexually assaulted the young boy, Miles. The young girl, Flora, seems to be stalked by Miss Jessel, the former governess who was involved in an affair with Quint. Eventually Flora is removed from the house and sent to be with her uncle. This leaves Miles and the current governess to confront Quint, which they do and instead of the resolution that I hoped I would find, I was left feeling quite confused over what just happened. A number of questions about the children and their safety springs to mind, but for me the biggest question was did all this really happen or was this simply a product of the governess’ psychotic imagination. The story was appropriately chilling and certainly creepy enough, but I would rather have had an ending that I understood instead of all these questions, but perhaps this was exactly how Henry James wanted to leave his readers.
    • 5/5
      Brilliantly eerie story with much mystery surrounding what is actually happening. Is it an examination of a unhealthy personality or truly a ghost story? This is such a nice copy of the book, but the illustration are world class awful.
    • 3/5
      Not much to say about this one. It had great potential to be a really creepy Halloween tale, but just fell flat for me.

      The writing was very good and typical of the writing in the late 1800s.
    • 2/5
      A ghost story with a horrific overtone.Victorian obscurity in expression, so not to say anything that could be objectionable. Took me a while to figure out what was worrying the governess.220
    • 5/5
      Haunting and haunted and ambiguous. Don't read this for a pat ending.
    • 4/5
      Henry James. Reading is work is like wading through a jungle of commas and just before you can't take any more coming across something that is beautiful. Like eating chicken wings in Heaven; you’ve still got to work too damn hard for a little that is sublime.Everyone knows the story. It’s worth reading and the percentage of commas to sentence does fall after the first half.
    • 4/5
      Read this about 4 times in college, and I was thinking about it today (thinking about how much I enjoyed discussing literature at length and writing essays about my crazy interpretations). I enjoyed arguing a thesis about what was actually haunting the house...I believe I argued that it was a forbidden lust or something.
    • 3/5
      The story of a governess whose sexual repressions cause her to believe that the children she is caring for are in danger of attack by an evil male spirit. So real is the spirit to her that she in turn terrorizes the youngsters. The reader likewise becomes confused. Is the ghost real or is it a figment of her repressed imagination? Hence the supernatural element of the story. The Freudian themes and symbols, she sees him on a tower (phallic anyone?), as well as the possibility of implanting in others one's own beliefs and memories, keeps the work suspenseful and the reader engaged.
    • 4/5
      A Victorian Ghost Story about the evils of men and the fear of the uncivilized... WE find a governess who is duty bound to protect the children in her charge from the things that go bump in the night. The story presents the isolation caused by a guarded Victorian rectified World.
    • 4/5
      At the start I was having 'Jane Eyre' flashbacks - a governess, a pleasant young girl as her charge, a housekeeper for her primary company, a love interest in the handsome but absent landowner, an isolated manor in the English countryside. Henry James knows this; he is winking at us when the narrator begins to wonder whether there could be "an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?" In short order though (and with benefit of the prologue), this tale resolves into a ghost story rather than a romance. The author aimed to build suspense through that prologue's promise of a horrific tale to follow, etc. Maybe this worked at the time but now it leads to false expectations of something schlocky. Encountering an unexplained stranger in my own house at the dead of the night would be deeply chilling, even more so if it had a mysterious influence on my children; but today's reader of modern horror is spoiled by the likes of Stephen King’s in-your-face approach. TotS's relatively mild scenes won’t incite the same horror ... unless you read slowly, absorbing every turn of the narrator's thoughts, placing yourself in her shoes and opening your mind to its widest expanse of empathy for her. Then you can still find at least a wisp of its carefully crafted spell.Henry James has a style all his own that I admire, but it does require an extra level of patience. I've long confused this work with 'The Taming of the Shrew' for being similarly named, but now that I've read one I think I can keep them straight.
    • 4/5
      Like most novels with ambiguous endings, this one has had me thinking over the past few days. It's a haunted house story, in the sense that the narrative follows a young governess as she moves into a country estate to be faced with the pair of ghosts that haunt the two children in her care, but it's by no means the typical "chills & thrills"-type horror novel. There's little scary about these supernatural beings but the fact that they seem bent on corrupting the children in some way, continuing the negative influence they'd had while alive. An influence towards what, one wonders, as there are implications but it's never made explicit. In fact, the majority of the novel is concerned with this sense of taboo - wrongs so unspeakable but titillating the characters can only speak around them in innuendo, trying to force each other into revelation first. I'd definitely recommend giving this a read, but expect (and embrace!) the loose ends.
    • 3/5
      Disappointed after hearing all the praise of this novella, possibly was more shocking in its day and I’ve now become jaded by ghost stories. Lots of gothic atmosphere, tension and uncertainty. While the language wasn’t all that difficult, the style and manner of writing made it a bit difficult to get through. Long sentences with many clauses served to confuse me and lose the gist at times. Not really an enjoyable read so it felt longer and I was glad when it ended. Can’t recommend, but glad I filled in the gap of my reading of classic literature.
    • 3/5
      It's time for another classic and this time it's the gothic ghost story by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. Referred to here and there, I've always wanted to read it and find out if it's still scary by today's measures.BackgroundHenry James wrote too many novels and short stories to mention, most notably The Portrait of a Lady in 1881. Published in 1898, The Turn of the Screw has an ambiguous ending, but of course in my arrogance I believed I would finish the last page with a firm idea of what had happened and little room for any doubt. You see, I dislike ambiguous endings and I always have an opinion, so if a book requires the reader to decide the ending then I make a decision and get on with it. If the author doesn't tell me the ending of the book then I decide for myself, but in The Turn of the Screw, it wasn't as easy as all that.Plot SummaryA governess is hired to look after a young boy Miles and his younger sister Flora in a large gothic house (pictured above) after the death of their parents. The children are charming, well behaved and a pleasure to teach and look after. It comes as a shock then when the governess is notified that Miles has been expelled from boarding school, although the letter is vague regarding the reason for his expulsion. This was the most intriguing part of the novella for me and a great cause for discussion amongst academics and students alike.While this has been happening the governess has been seeing a female and male presence on the estate and begins to suspect they are ghosts and that the children are aware of their presence but won't admit it. With the help of the housekeeper, the female ghost is identified as Miss Jessel - the previous governess - and the male ghost as Quint - also a previous employee - both who mysteriously died.The governess tries to protect the children from their evil presence while Miles seems to know more than he is letting on. Late in the story, Miles says he was expelled from school for telling something to those he liked, who then told those they liked. Some argue this is evidence Miles was expelled for homosexual behaviour but discovering this hypothesis after finishing the book was such a shock that I just find it difficult to believe.I won't spoil the ending, but here are the possibilities I came up with: - Miles could have told his classmates that he killed Miss Jessel and Quint; the classmates then going on to tell their friends and so on, resulting in his expulsion. - Another possibility is that Miles could have told his friends that he was seeing ghosts; his friends could have spread the gossip, laughed and teased him, leading to his expulsion for being of unsound mind.- Miles was incredibly manipulative and his expulsion could have been related to his devious and manipulative behaviour.So, was The Turn of the Screw scary? Well, it was certainly creepy, I'll give it that much! Miles was a manipulative character and a believable one. I enjoyed the gothic evocation of place, and the conversations Miles had with the governess made me squirm. Immediately after finishing the novella (it's a short read) I went online to seek out discussions related to The Turn of the Screw and the ending in particular. I'm still not satisfied and I just wish the author had organised for the answers to be printed upside down at the back of the book.
    • 3/5
      James certainly creates a haunting atmosphere, relentlessly ratcheting up the tension throughout this tale of the evil forces confronting the young governess who arrives at a large Victorian house to look after two seemingly cherubic orphans, Mile and Flora.However, at times I found James's highly stylized writing almost impenetrable (to a far great er degree than I had experienced with some of his longer works). Thomas Hardy said of James that he wrote with "a ponderously warm manner of saying nothing in infinite sentences". Well perhaps he should know!, However, on this occasion I wouldn't disagree at all. In this story James seems more concerned with showing how elaborately he could write than in delivering a flowing story.
    • 2/5
      I tried to read this classic Victorian story of haunted children years ago, but quickly gave up as I could not cut my way through the impenetrable language in which it was written; this time, I have succeeded in reading it, but I cannot say I have enjoyed the experience (and if it had been a full length novel rather than a novella of 117 pages in my edition, I probably would have failed a second time to get through it). I am a considerable reader of classic Victorian novels and have no problem with the more challenging language in which they are often written, compared to more modern writing, but here the language is often so opaque that I frequently read a sentence four or five times and still could not divine its meaning. The effort in doing so does not repay, as I found the story to have no real atmosphere and to be hardly chilling at all, except at brief moments and at the very end. A disappointment that for me does not deserve its high reputation.
    • 4/5
      An inexperienced young woman is hired to become the governess of two small children near the town of Bly in Victorian England. The children have no parents and it is their uncle who hires her. She is informed that she is not to contact him at all u less there is a good reason. The two children are Miles and Flora. Soon, two ghosts appear, Quint and Jessel, who were the former caregivers of the children.It never becomes clear if it is the governess alone who sees these ghosts or if the children do as well. Who is the crazy one... Who knows.
    • 5/5
      I was gripped by this short tale of supernatural goings on. What was real, who was the ghost, was the protagonist what she seemed? The flow of the language on the page was like the flow of speech. I couldn't keep myself from reading on, I had to know what happened.
    • 3/5
      A little novel about a dear little boy and a dear little girl, who are plagued by ghosts of of their previous caretakers, who may or may not have taken part in little perversions. The little children live in a mansion full of little rooms, run by a governess who may be a little crazy. The plot suffers from a little bit of ambiguity. I guess it's time to read a dozen critical essays on this classic. Until then, 3 - more than a little generous - stars.
    • 2/5
      Intense? No. Boring.
    • 2/5
      Nogal moeilijk verhaal over verschijningen; de lezer wordt op het verkeerde been gezet. Thema's: onschuld kinderen, overbescherming door volwassenen.
    • 2/5
      I had a college professor who issued a threat to our class via an anecdote about a prof from his own undergrad days. If a paper ran past the prescribed length, his professor would put a red line through anything remaining and write "ends abruptly" in the margin. I can only assume that's what happened to Henry James when he wrote this novel. I was listening to this on audiobook, and, even though the lady with the British accent said the recording had concluded, I just sat there thinking that there had to be a hidden track or something and if I sat in silence long enough, it would reveal itself.I've not looked in a while, but I'm pretty sure it says on my English degree that I'm supposed to give at least four stars to everything British, and especially everything written in the 19th century, so it's possible that rating this book poorly will result in my being stripped of my bachelor's degree. Meh. I wasn't using it much anyway except for a little blogging, a few book reviews, and some obscure references with which I pepper conversations to discourage others from engaging me in small talk.But really, what the heck did I just read? I get that the narrator is unreliable, I get why the references to (sexual?) misconduct are mostly communicated through significant facial expressions, and I get that I'm probably supposed to be confused. Sometimes these things make me enjoy a book and sometimes they don't. My experience with The Turn of the Screw is closer to the latter.Now, one thing I like is how the narrator always wants to face things directly in a household of people who are tiptoeing around issues and an employer who expressly directs her not to talk to him about anything. It demonstrates how crazy-making it is to want to have straightforward answers when everyone around you is either silent or speaks obliquely. It's difficult to know where one stands when the best one can hope for in the way of explanation is an arched eyebrow or perhaps, if one is lucky, a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Would it kill them to just come out with it? (spoiler alert...(view spoiler))
    • 1/5
      Wow, I forgot that I *HATE* Henry James. Actually, I didn't hate him quite so much before I read this book, but now I really do. So disappointed! The hugely long paragraphs made my eyes glaze over. I couldn't pay attention long enough to figure out what was really going on. I think if I hadn't heard the whole discussion on [The Turn of the Screw] - is it really ghosts or is the governess nuts - I would have been at least a little drawn into the story, to see what would happen next. But as it is, I just couldn't force myself to finish this! My vote is a solid 'the governess is nuts' vote. Totally unbelievable premise and I couldn't STAND the woman. Just bad.
    • 4/5
      Audiobook performed by Simon Vance and Vanessa BenjaminA ghost story and psychological thriller. A young woman is hired to be governess to two young children, Miles and Flora. They are the wards of “the master,” their uncle, who has taken on their guardianship after their parents died in India. He is unmarried and really not interested in the children or the running of the household. In fact, after hiring the governess he tells her to simply deal with whatever comes up and not to bother him at all. James begins the tale with a gathering of friends at Christmas. They begin telling ghost stories, and eventually one of them mentions the document he received from a young woman (she is never named). He then begins to read the tale. This opening puzzles me, because James never returns to this gathering of friends. The rest of the novel is devoted to the governess’s manuscript / notes on what happened. Having arrived at the mansion, she is charmed by the angelic Flora, enjoying their lessons and spending time with her. She also befriends the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, who answers some of her questions about the previous governess, Miss Jessel. Things begin to go badly quickly however. A strange figure is seen in one of the mansion’s towers. Miles returns from school, presumably for holiday, but in reality has been expelled without explanation. The governess is certain that some malevolent entity is intent on capturing the children in her care, and she is determined to prevent it from doing so. All the uncertainty and secrecy serve to increase the emotional tension in the story. It is dark, and puzzling, and disturbing. I am not a fan of the ending, which seems abrupt and unexplained. But then, a good ghost story SHOULD leave us wondering. The audiobook is performed by Simon Vance, who voices the introduction, and Vanessa Benjamin who narrates the governess’s manuscript. They are both accomplished voice actors and do a marvelous job with James’ work.
    • 5/5
      eBook

      Reading The Turn of the Screw is like few other reading experiences I've ever had. It's perhaps most similar to Faulkner's unwillingness to explicitly explore the trauma driving his characters, but taken to an extreme far beyond that. Does James truly know what is happening in the story? Perhaps, but given that the governess, despite her overwhelming certainty in her own beliefs, is one of literature's least-trustworthy narrators, it is impossible for any reader to have total certainty about any part of her story.

      It's her certainty, paradoxically, that makes the governess such a compelling character. Presented with events she doesn't fully comprehend, she leaps to conclusions with a startling suddenness, and once adopted, treats those conclusions as absolute facts. It is, in fact, her certainty that leads to so much doubt on the part of the reader, even as it is responsible for the creation of the story itself. Clearly, the story as written, whether true or not, is the governess' creation. Throughout, she fills in every narrative gap, cutting off the statements of others so as to complete their statements herself, or painting in vivid terms the motivations and imaginings of characters that would otherwise have remained hidden. As readers, we're not allowed our own suppositions about the other characters or the events of the story. The governess tells us what they say, think, believe, and do, leaving us only a binary option, befitting greatly the way her own mind works: do we believe her or not?

      No matter our efforts, we can never really know if there were ghosts at Bly Manor, but in the end, that's irrelevant. The ghosts exist inside the governess' head, perhaps not as the spirits of the former governess and her lover, but at least in the form of the world constructed within the current governess' head. In a strange way, she is both narrator and reader of her own story, not only telling us what is happening, but simultaneously inviting us to join her in her own understanding of what she witnesses.