The Turn of the Screw (G.K. Hall Large Print Perennial Bestseller Collection)
By Henry James
Product Description
One of literature's most gripping ghost stories depicts the sinister transformation of 2 innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. Elegantly told tale of unspoken horror and psychological terror creates what few stories in literature have been able to do — a complete feeling of dread and uncertainty.
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #2946985 in Books
Published on: 1995-06
Format: Large Print
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
177 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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.
From AudioFile
James's novella is one of the great intellectual spook tales of all time. The plot: A neurotic governess, believing that the two children in her care are being haunted by malevolent ghosts, seeks to exorcize them. Here Emma Fielding gives an arresting and dramatic performance. Unfortunately, she doesn't give full character to the narrating governess. How can she? This is an abridgment of an unabridgeable text, one so carefully nuanced that every phrase contributes another color to the palette. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Midwest Book Review
Henry James' haunting, complex, and still controversial short story proved to be a perfect vehicle for translation to the graphic novel format by the gifted artist Guido Crepax. Crepax (in his unusual page layout designs) is a proven master of the innuendo, the mysterious and the sensually disturbing sexual undertones. Crepax is very well known for his remarkable adaptations of such adult classics as "Emmanuelle" and "The Story of O". With the brilliant story-telling talent of Henry James, Crepex has once again successfully tackled with finesse and great sensuality, an aspect of our psyche that may fascinate, but also possibly horrify us. The atmosphere in The Turn Of The Screw is visually loaded and deceptively quiet and routine.
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Customer Reviews
Turn of the screw...
I found this to be a rather boring classic. I just couldn't really get interested in it enough to not be confused. I didn't even understand what happened in the end. I stayed confused for most of the book. I started over several times but still couldn't keep up with who was speaking who they were speaking about. So I can't recommend this book. Sorry.
Honestly? Don't read it for fun.
It's hard to know how to rate this. Of course, it's ridiculously presumptuous for me to give a classic of English literature anything less than the full rating, but honestly? It's hard to read. The sentences are so elliptical, and the sensibilities of the narrator so difficult for a modern reader to intuit, that I finally rated it for its appeal to a casual reader. Reading it now, I didn't really suffer any thrills of horror. The ghost story really hasn't been the same since Stephen King started writing. Instead, what struck me was the flightiness of the governess, her daisy-chains of inference, and at least two instances where she reports things to the housekeeper as facts that contradict elements of her own narrative. That's the beauty of the story for me, the deftness with which James instills doubt about the credibility of his narrator. So, as a foundation of the horror genre and part of the English lit cannon, may every library contain at least one copy. But it's probably best actually read in the context of a class, where it can be appreciated for its structure and significance and no one will expect reading it to actually be fun.
An OK novella
The Turn of the Screw is an alright novel if you like that sort of reading, it requires in depth dissection of everything said, and you get no real answers in the end, which is what I really didn't like, though I have theories of my own. After the initial read I was very disappointed, I had been told that it was a great novel; however, after discussing the book in my American novels class, many things were revealed to me that I had not noticed before.
For those of you that don't like dissecting books and just want to sit down and enjoy a good read, I really don't recommend this story. However if you enjoy picking stories apart you will love this book. For me it was a 50/50 toss up book, not great but not bad either.
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