Rating: 
Summary: It leaves a lot to think about..
Review: The Turn of the Screw leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It is the story of a governess who is haunted by her predecessor and her [the former governess's] lover.. or at least thinks she is. She determines that the two ghosts are there for the children. Henry James never tells us straight out whether the governess is slowly going crazy, or if all that happens is true. There are hints at both situations. Henry James uses the language very well. However, there are some references to art and literature that are interesting, but may not be immediately recognized. If you think they might interest you, I'd suggest getting an annotated edition. If you are considering picking this book up for a scare, this might not satisfy you. If you want a thought-provoking, psychological novella, this is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Mind Bender
Review: I stumbled upon this one in a collection of gothic hooror. Absolutely loved it! Knocked my socks off. Literary analyis aside this is a great story. I never figured a victorian novel to be psychological, but the author masters it brilliantly. He also leaves a lot for interpretation which makes, still to this day, great conversation. This aspect may frustrate some readers, but once I saw what the author was doing, I had no problem with it. A wonderfully creepy ghost story and a must for fans of victorian literature.
Rating:
Summary: Was she crazy?
Review: Okay, I read this short story in a week and half. Usually it takes me less than three days to read a regular book or novel but this story was a strange read and I had to read and re-read a few times to really understand it. I still don't get it. But I think she was sick in the head, or she went crazy, and last I think...she kinda loved Miles a bit too much than she should have. All this thinking has given me a headache. The story is complex in it's telling of the story. Why? Well you have this young governess who takes a job that she should have given some thought before jumping at the chance of taking the responsibilty of teaching and taken over the care of two small children. One of children has a problem of keeping out of trouble, and has a secret she tries to get of him that is deadly. Then there is a suppose supernatural secret that surrounds the mansion she lives in. This story is really weird. I first heard of it when reading the original reviews of "The Exoricst". Which is one of my favorite books ever. That books was easy to understand except the ending, where it never tells if the little Regan remembered the exorcism or not. I think she did. But "The Turn of Screw", is just a very weird book. This book never answers the end questions and just leaves it up to the reader in having to decide whether the governess is seeing ghost or is it just her being sick in the head, or just the shocking ending is her doing.
Rating:
Summary: Trudging language, but worth the long haul
Review: I really enjoyed reading Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw", though the middle is plagued with inflated wording common to the era. It is interesting to trace modern concepts used in scary stories and horror movies today back to the originations of the genre. In my Gothic Literature class, however, we have been tracing these ideas from the very beginning with such works as Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" and Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho" that predate James, and it is also immensely interesting to see how they evolved. This, I believe, is one of the very first stories with the "governess" figure, who later reappears again and again throughout the genre as the babysitter or other non-parental caregiver. Aside from this supposed new (at the time) concept, this story is constructed in the similar style and formula as previous and later Gothic novels and branch-off novels, what with the slow suspense working up to a drop off and unclear climax. James, dabbling somewhat out of what is usual for him, employs familiar devices such as nightly ghostly interactions, blundering, though well-intentioned servants, and the young, lone woman venturing to a new, unknown place under mysterious and foreboding circumstances. Though slightly predictable, it's fun and short, and the Dover Thrift Edition is really [inexpensive]. I would definitely recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Why is this a classic?
Review: I'm being genrous with two stars, because it's a classic, but I really had to struggle through this turgid text. It's short (my copy runs at 104 pages), but it took me nearly a year to read it. I kept putting it aside, reading other books in between. I agree with those who say that NOTHING HAPPENS, and that the text is so WORDY and CONVULUTED. I too had to reread sentences several times to figure out what the governess was trying to say. I don't mind old books, and I can accept that in previous centures customs, attitudes, and phrasing differed. That might still allow for a great story. But this is STILL a boring convuluted book. Mary Shelly's FRANKENSTEIN was written nearly a century before TOTS, yet FRANKENSTEIN reads well, is interesting, and says important things about life and philosophy even if the views of people 200 years ago are not our own. So just because TOTS was first published in 1898 is no excuse for its dull convuluted telling.
Rating:
Summary: Still haunting after all these years.
Review: One of the most seductive of all ghost stories, Turn of the Screw is not a tale for young people inured to Halloween I and II or Tales from the Crypt. It is a sophisticated and subtle literary exercise in which the author creates a dense, suggestive, and highly ambiguous story, its suspense and horror generated primarily by what the author does NOT say and does not describe. Compelled to fill in the blanks from his/her own store of personal fears, the reader ultimately conjures up a more horrifying set of images and circumstances than anything an author could impose from without. Written in 1898, this is superficially the tale of a governess who accepts the job of teaching two beautiful, young children whose uncle-guardian wants nothing to do with them. On a symbolic level, however, it is a study of the mores and prejudices of the times and, ultimately, of the nature of Evil. The governess fears that ghosts of the former governess Miss Jessel and her lover, valet Peter Quint, have corrupted the souls of little Flora and Miles and have won them to the side of Evil. The children deny any knowledge of ghosts, and, in fact, only the governess actually sees them. Were it not for the fact that the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, can identify them from the governess's descriptions, one might be tempted to think that the governess is hallucinating. Though the governess is certainly neurotic and repressed, this novel was published ten years before Freud, suggesting that the story should be taken at face value, as a suspenseful but enigmatic Victorian version of a Faustian struggle for the souls of these children. The ending, which comes as a shock to the reader, is a sign that such struggles should never be underestimated. As is always the case with James, the formal syntax, complex sentence structure, and elaborately constructed narrative are a pleasure to read for anyone who loves language, formality, and intricate psychological labyrinths. As is obvious from the reviews here by high school students, however, these literary "charms" may be less alluring to those on whom they are imposed as required reading.
Rating: 
Summary: You see, the thing is...
Review: OK, you see, the thing is, this was required reading for a Senior Writing Seminar. I was told that this was scary. Hmm, tlet me think... uh, no. Boring. All of a sudden, this chick starts seeing al these ghosts, she thinks that they're real, but the children don't see them which makes you think the kids are in on it with the care taker woman who aids the governess. Then there's the sexual tensions between the kids and the ghosts, rap and what not, then Miles and the governess. Then she suffocates him at the end. Yeah, ok... where's the ghosts?
Rating:
Summary: Whatta Waste of Time!
Review: This story sounds like it should be a real thriller: a young governess is given charge of two children at a remote manor house where she proceeds to see ghosts. She believes the ghosts have evil intent towards the children and puts herself to protect her charges, only to come to suspect that the children are well aware of what is going on and welcome it. What's the problem with this? Well, in the first place, it's just dull. If you've read my summary, you can dispense with the book because literally nothing else happens. Apart from a few ghost sightings, there are no events in this book. Now maybe ghost sightings themselves were enough to give a shiver at the time TOTS was written, but in the age of Stephen King and Clive Barker, mere apparitions just aren't much of a challenge. Although there are allegedly evil doings afoot at Bly, the only reason anyone should suspect such a thing is because the narrator says it's so. According to literary crititcs, this gives TOTS a "delicious ambiguity." Amibguous it might be; delicious it certainly is not. The characters are flat -- in fact they are all but caricatures. In fact, the book relies on the reader's having an understanding of and sharing the social assumptions of the time it was written to have any kind of effect. Children are by nature innocent; servants are by nature inferior, and that sort of rubbish. If you buy that, you can buy that Miss Jessup was evil simply because she associated with someone beneath her and that Quint was evil because he "gave himself airs," but I don't buy it at all. I really like authors to support such sweeping statements and I didn't see James making any effort to do so. Another thing I find tiring about James is that he never uses one word to say something when ten will do. There were whole chapters in TOTS that could have been admirably summed up by the narrator's stating that she just didn't know what was the right thing to do next, and a great many passages that were so convoluted in terms of language that it took rereading them several times to even get a sense of the point. Reading _Turn of the Screw_ made it easy to understand why Henry James's novels so quickly fell out of fashion and why he never made it as a playwrite. Some lovely movies have been made from his work, but they rely heavily on the actors' ability to convey character in a way that he never does. If you're looking for a real classic chiller, read Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House_, or even _Jane Eyre_. _Turn of the Screw_ is a boring waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, ambiguous...
Review: This book was reccommended to me because I like "The House of the Seven Gables;" I read it after I enjoyed an Edith Horton book (I had heard they were contemporaries with similar styles.) The book is very well written and I enjoyed his use of vocab words; it wasn't written for an 8th grade education. (The vocab is a plus, but I had to use the dictionary in several places- a plus for me could be an annoyance to you.) The ending leaves you wondering what happened next; who really saw the ghosts; if there's mental illness, who has it... I enjoyed it because of the ending and because it is a ghost story that doesn't contain thumps in the attic and "boo" (or bloody violence.) My one critism is that some sentences were so long that I had to reread them several times to grasp their meaning-frustrating. Overall, a very good book that should pique your interest.
Rating:
Summary: Can't sleep after reading this book
Review: "Turn of the Screw" starts out fine, but leaves too much unexplained. I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep after reading it. Hard to know if the governess is hysterical, if the children are being controlled by the spirits or what. The ending is shocking and still leaves too much unanswered.
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