Review: The Turn of the Screw
I picked this up just poking around the library’s virtual shelves. I recognized the title and figured I’d catch up with a classic.
It’s a gothic ghost story and I’ve heard enough ghost stories to see the foundations here. And I know that James is often read more in subtext than in text. But for all the discursive text here I missed a lot of the context.
I do think it’s very hard to be eerie on the page. Especially so when you’re talking to someone across a century and ten levels of class. And even with all that gap, I did feel the slow ratchet of tension rising. But overall it felt like homework.