Rating: 
Summary: Classic Psychological Thriller
Review: This book begins with the retelling of a sinister tale from thepast. A young woman in Victorian England secures a job as governessto two orphan children. As she arrives at her new post, she feels uneasy even though all seems well and the future looks bright. Despite attempts at optimism, the presence of evil continues until the governess begins to experience regular and terrifying sightings. The horror rapidly grows when the reason behind these visitations is realized. Although this book is short, its impact is nevertheless profound. The story's setting is surrealistic, leaving many factors open to speculation and debate. The end is chilling and mysterious at the same time. The enigmatic nature of the story adds to the mystery and terror and this book is sure not to disappoint any reader looking for a haunting and unforgettable story.
Rating: 
Summary: A Teenage Perspective
Review: Well-- I read this small story over Christmas Break for a Research and Comprehension class, and all I can say is... INNATE! Innate and extremely deep! After all, the book's main focus is undoubtedly aimed at sex and class status. Although this book was written in the Victorian Era where discussion of sexual connotations, especially children's, are strictly forbidden, this book strangely relates to the modern world of sex and status. There are so many interpretations you can conceive from the odd chaos happening at the Bly Estate; and I think that's exactly what Henry James was trying to infer. Everything is so confusing and you don't know who is to blame, what they are to blame for, and WHAT exactly is going wrong anyway... and isn't that EXACTLY what is happening today? SEX IS NOTHING BUT CONFUSION! No matter your age, your class rank or status, OR sexual orientation. I'm not saying that Henry James was a head of his time or anything, he was just in a position and time where he couldn't express his thoughts or beliefs regarding the issue without draping a vail over it. Which, in my opinion, he did a pretty good job of doing. He also did a good job of demonstrating the Victorian Era's household of rank: the mother (governess'), father (Peter Quint or insufficient headmaster), the children (Miles and Flora), and the housekeeper (Mrs. Grose). He also demonstrates the consequences of either not having, or having a corrupt working member of the household. I believe this goes as far as the modern-day household does. The children desperately need acceptable parents, and the parent figures need each other (children:mother, children:father, mother:father, father: mother, BOTH PARENTS:housekeeper, children:housekeeper) And so on... So, in conclusion- this was a sick, corrupt, dishonest, sinister, grave story with unclear, bizarre motives... but it obviously got me thinking! I hope you don't enjoy it, for morality's sake!
Rating: 
Summary: A classic ghost story
Review: Having been a student of literature in college, this is a title that surfaced ever so often when discussions turned to "pivotal" literary works. After finally reading it, it appears that reason for its considerable attention lies in the fact that it's likely the first ghost story NOT to be taken @ face value.
Instead of a straightforward story, the reader is introduced to a plot-line as seen thru the eyes of an ostensibly unstable persona. Whether the ghosts are real or just figments of her mis-guided imagination are topics left open to interpretation. Unexpectedly, the story casually alludes to elements of eroticism, paranoia and severe anxiety. The story itself is beautifully written. That James was a master of elegant prose is without question. The style of his prose may seem a bit odd (and perhaps "thick") to the modern reader, but one has to admire his manipulation of the language. For those who enjoy a good ghost story where everything may not be as it seems, this book is highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous - the ambiguity makes it wonderful!
Review: I've heard a great deal of criticism directed both at this novel and at Henry James himself. "The Turn of the Screw" has been derided as dull and uneventful, while James's writing is scornfully dismissed because of its complexity. I found myself quite surprised at this negative perspective - "The Turn of the Screw" is fascinating and remarkably entertaining. The story itself is fairly simplistic on the surface. In the hands of a lesser writer, it would have been a simple "things that go bump in the night" ghost story of no consequence. However, the ambiguity of the narration brings the story a great deal of depth. Are we to trust the governess's story, or is the entire plot merely a figment of her imagination or a neurotic response to her sexuality? The brilliance here is in the wide range of interpretation. The entire novel can be taken either way (or both ways at once) equally well, which is fascinating. Many reviewers have (unfavorably) commented on the writing style of Henry James, noting its complexity and verbosity. While his prose can be difficult to master (I had to read several sentences multiple times to decipher them), the complex language does not merely use extra words for the sake of making the story longer. Instead, every bit of detail in the sentences modifies and elaborates on the text, helping greatly to create the haziness that permeates "The Turn of the Screw." I thoroughly enjoyed the style of writing here, and this is coming from somebody who criticized the language in "Wuthering Heights" and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." The complexity enhances the novel, rather than weakening it. All in all, I was astonished by the great quality of "The Turn of the Screw." One last note - I highly recommend the Norton Critical Edition, featuring authorial commentary, reviews, and criticism. An excellent choice.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult to Read but Fun
Review: James's narrative style is bit difficult for me to read. It seems to me that, at least in this story, he writes in a breathless, phrase filled steam of consciousness style - similar, but more so, to this sentence. Most sentences contain many phrases having more or less to do with the subject of the sentence but getting to a point that I would re-read many of them to try to sort out exactly what was intended. Oftentimes, I felt that I only got the gist of the sentence before moving on. The story is intriguing and I was dying to understand it. In the end, I think that a great deal of the ambiguity is intentional. This is one case where I may end up resorting to help from Cliff in interpretation. The story of the unnamed governess is given as a sort of ghost story told among friends but originating from the real manuscript of the narrator's sister's governess of the spectral occurrences she witnessed at a previous position she had had when she was younger. Accepting a post at Bly as governess to a young girl who's brother was away to school, she is under the strict interdiction not to make reports to her employer, the children's legal guardian and uncle. Shortly after the beginning of her engagement, the male child returns from the school, presumably for the holidays, but a letter from the headmaster informs her that he is not to be allowed back. No reasons are given and a mystery develops over why a child so innocent seeming as he should be outcast. Mystery continues to flourish as the new governess begins to see two people on the grounds that are identified by the housekeeper on their descriptions as the previous governess and the employer's man - both deceased. As the governess becomes convinced that the apparitions have malevolent designs on the children, she enters into a struggle of evasion and confrontation, dealing with things half-said or unspoken. While I was truly clueless most of the time as to exactly what her suspicions were, the ending seemed to illuminate them and was very powerful. I think that the design of the story is to play on the reader's imagination and interpretation ... I think. This is one story where I will seek out other's reactions to see if I read it the same way they did; but even if other's reader's interpretation are vastly different I still believe that that allowance for each reader's imagination to give the shape to the story is remarkable.
Rating:
Summary: The Turn of The Screw
Review: This was my first experience of Henry James when I first read it aged 17, and it is a book I return to time and time again. It is an extremely enjoyable, albeit at times confusing, read. Some people have described James' allusive and ambiguous style as 'infuriating' and 'extremely difficult'. Whilst I agree that his habit of not stating anything explicitly and his thick prose make reading him a challenge, the effort invested is well worth it. The story is told as a multiple hand-me-down from a number of first-person narrators. The original governess of the story, then Douglas and then finally the fireside narrator telling ghost stories at Christmas Eve in the opening of the book. It relates the experiences of the governess when staying at Bly, tutoring an 8 year old girl and 11 year old boy. The 'master' of the house remains completely detached, and James uses the tentative and volatile position of a governess in a master-less house to critique Victorian social ideals and explore themes of sexual repression and frustration. None of this is stated explicitly however, and the reader is left to decide what is being hinted at by James' beautiful but often vague prose. The reader becomes increasingly aware of the unreliability of the narrator (something James makes gradually clear in a manner reminiscent of Poe) and one finds oneself questioning and exploring everything all that James leaves unsaid. This is something to savour however, and a little patience from the reader will be paid back many times over by the pleasure which can be obtained from reading and rereading this wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: why and how you read this book, and what you get out of it:
Review: Confusing, different, but enjoyable if you understand it, this is not a light novel. The Turn of the Screw: absolutely different. (That for all of you who would like to know why this little 86 page quasi-novella is considered a "classic"). How to read this book: Rather than looking onto another person's life, (like you would with any other novel), you need to get inside it. This is particularly disturbing because the narrator is mad. Crawl into her head, and start seeing things from her eyes -- but don't forget the fact that you're in there! Everything you see is distorted. Yes, everything she says is verbose, too complex, and ambiguous, but if she were to write short, clear sentences, you would understand it, wouldn't you? She's insane ... insane people are not straightforward in any way. If you are wondering why you are reading a page over and over again, and not quite getting it, you're doing exactly what Henry James wants you to do: he's turning your screw. This can be a terrifying novel because everything you see it through the eyes of an insane woman ... but this is not a ghost story. That is too simple an explanation. James plants evidence which could sway you to one direction, but he always counteracts it with another piece of information leading to another conclusion: in other words, it leaves you lost. A plot can only be identified once you come to terms with the fact that your narrator is a psychopath. If you look closely, the sexuality in this book is widely used. In the 19th century, to speak openly of sex was forbidden, so hints are dropped instead, (pay particularly close attention to Miles). Some critics call the governess a sexually suppressed woman -- her cause of madness is thus. You decide. But whatever you do, bear in mind that this book is different. You can't simply read it ... you have to read it, think about it, and decide whether you want to believe whatever is said. It can be a frustrating read, but it can also be well worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the greatest ghost story ever written
Review: Henry James enjoys one of the most towering reputations in all of literature, much of this owing to his being, infamously, a "hard" author to read and understand, due to his verbosity and complexity of style; he is second in this department, perhaps, only to James Joyce himself. His short novel The Turn of The Screw in many ways exemplifies these Jamesian qualities, it being, perhaps, the archetypal James story. The story can be taken on two different levels (or, perhaps, both at once): one level as a simple ghost story, on another as a much more complex and teasingly ambiguous pre-Freudian psychological masterpiece (these Freudian interpretations have, as is also the case with Hamlet, become so inundated into the general literary consciousness that it is now almost impossible to view the work outside of their critical context -- but it must also be noted that James himself repeatedly repudiated such an approach to this work during his lifetime.) The work can be seen as the epitome of narrative ambiguity: it raises many questions, most of which are never satisfactorily resolved. To the reader looking for a quick read, or a good ghost story, this can be immensely frustrating; to those looking to plumb the buried psychological depths of the Freudian literary landscape, it is a positive goldmine. Few stories of this length have attracted so much literary criticism -- The Turn of the Screw being matched in that department probably only by Kafka's The Metamorphosis. James introduces many subtleties into this story that the reader can pursue as far as he or she wishes. One may wonder, for example, if the ghosts really exist, or if they are merely the projections of the governess to account for her own repressed sexual impulses. Does she have repressed sexual feelings for Miles? Are the ghosts, if they exist, there to harm and abuse the children, or to protect them? Which of the two is the governess, after all, doing? These ubiquitous questions, and many others, have served to fascinate and delight literary critics for over a century -- and frustrated many general readers. On that note, I feel that I must defend James's characteristically verbose writing style, at least as he used it for this work. The book is not too wordy or descriptive: the long stretches without dialogue provide necessary, not to mention fascinating, glimpses into the inner workings of the narrator's mind. Clearly, James is not being wordy just in order to make the story longer: there are just as many instances of details being left out, facts held back, and descriptions being intentionally vague as there are instances of what many would consider superfluous. James here shows himself to be nothing less than a true master, his characteristic and unique use and manipulation of the English language his defining trait. If this is not one's cup of meat, one does not have to read it -- anyway, why, one wonders, would the casual reader ever want to attempt James? That said, if one is interested in James, or in classic literature, then this is a very good book to start with. It is short, and it serves well to introduce the reader to James's writing style. If one is merely looking for an entertaining ghost story, on the other hand, one had better look elsewhere. Advice on which edition to get: if one is merely attempting to own this story, without the peripheral critical analyses, then the Dover Thrift Edition comes highly recommended: it is full-text and extremely inexpensive. If one wishes to get a better grasp of the story, however, and explore its many complexities and underlying subtleties, then one should shell out the extra cash for an annotated edition, of which many exist.
Rating:
Summary: Governess, Ghosts, English Manor House- Gothic and Great
Review: This unexpectedly gothic James novel galvanized my attention and moved effortlessly through the strange plot. Like all of the best novels that include underlying psychological currents; this book can be read for the story alone. Two children and two ghosts with the mysterious uncle who demands complete ignorance of the day to day issues are joined by a governess who has the "eyes" to see the apparitions and who enters into the battle for their souls.
It is short and includes some of James' constructions- the story is being revealed years later by someone whose intimacy with the governess is only a post-mortem question mark. As far as the unresolved nature of the climax of the tale- James was too much of an intellectual to reveal what he really thought of ghosts and even the women who seemed to have psychic (sexual) fondnesses for them.
Rating:
Summary: Psychological Portrait of Repression
Review: I had long heard of Henry James and his short novella, The Turn of the Screw and decided to read it, thinking that at only 88 pages long, it would not take more than one evening. Three evenings later, I finished the text and I must admit slightly confused. I had to reread the ending several times to truly understand what had happened. Thankfully, I had the critical edition, which included several essays on the story, one in particular by Edmund White which profoundly changed my opinion of the story.
A simple ghost story on the face of it, but in reality a pre-Freudian tale of sexual repression. Narrated by an unnamed governess who ventures to a country house to take charge of two young orphaned children, it soon becomes a tale of ghosts, mysteries and secrets. Always alluded to and never talked about at face value, the governess becomes convinces that the ghosts are after the children and she alone can save them. But are there really ghosts? The reader must go beyond the plot and carefully read the language...all the language. James writes like no other author I have ever read. The best word to describe it is "dense". With almost no dialogue, the narrator can spend pages describing her thoughts and feelings, yet these are so "coded" as to decipher her real meaning takes much concentration on the part of the reader. I know that James himself thought the story an amusement only, but the critical essays I read after the book deeply impressed me that the story has hidden depths which make it all the more interesting.
I would recommend this novella to anyone with the patience to read it thoroughly and with an open mind as to its meaning. I would strongly recommend the critical edition which helps the reader better understand the story's meaning and importance in literature.
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