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by: Henry James
Amazon.com's Price: $3.99 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Perfect Paperback
EAN: 9781580491617
ISBN: 1580491618
Label: Prestwick House, Inc.
Manufacturer: Prestwick House, Inc.
Number Of Pages: 142
Publication Date: September 01, 2006
Publisher: Prestwick House, Inc.
Release Date: October 01, 2006
Sales Rank: 40181
Studio: Prestwick House, Inc.
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader more fully appreciate the rich complexity of James' language, images, and symbols. Before there was Alfred Hitchcock, there was Henry James, and before Psycho, there was The Turn of the Screw. Why is the young governess the only one who can see the ghosts? Are her young charges haunted or evil? Or is the governess herself mad? The book that claims to start out as a Christmas Eve ghost story quickly becomes a tale of psychological horror as the governess struggles-and ultimately fails-to protect the children from the 'corruption' that only she can conceive of...but cannot name. Richly wrought in Late-Victorian prose, Henry James' most famous novel is both hauntingly beautiful and a shocking glimpse into the ultimate source of evil...the human mind.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not as extraordinary as I expected
Although it is a glimpse into the personal mind more than a horror story and causes the reader to question the sanity of the source of the information, I found it to be uninteresting. Maybe that was unique back then, but not anymore. It also deals with suggestions of taboo subjects such as homosexuality and pedophiles, but only suggestions. I imagine that was unique in its time too. I just found that where some books that leave things unresolved or ambiguous (Calling of Lot 49, for instance) ... Read More
Rating:  - Turn of the Screw Keeps Turning
This edition provides provacative notes to assist the reader who is not accustomed to the gothic romance genre. Various critical theories are proposed which stimulate attentive reading. My own reading would lean towards the notion that James is satirizing popular horror stories, while at the same time taking jabs at readers who absorb them. In any case, the novella provokes interesting discussion.
Rating: - A struggle not worth the effort
This is the last time that I let Gil Grissom recommend a book for me. Yes, I let a fictional character from a TV show pick a book for me to read. The story is a fairly simple and uninspired Gothic "horror" story. There are some ghosts who never really do anything and a governess who overreacts to everything. The idea that perhaps the governess is insane and this isn't a simple horror story, in my opinion comes from the fact that it is impossible to justify reading this story without that conundrum. ... Read More
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