Turn of the Screw

Henry James's novels about rich Americans are known for their brilliance, not their scariness. The Turn of the Screw is an exception, a highlight in his work and among ghost stories, and one of the best evocations of moral turpitude in literature. The story is simple—the ghosts of a disgraced governess and her lover haunt her former charges and the woman who has replaced her—but the psychology of the victims's responses is what makes this story great.

The narrative is consistently and increasingly creepy. Are the ghosts real, or are the boy and girl lying? If they are real, can the kids actually communicate with them, and what bizarre form does that take? Definite answers are never given, but as the fear intensifies it's obvious something is wrong. James doesn't resort to gimmicks, but relies on the characters' thoughts and behavior to create a sense of dread that culminates in death.

Horrors concerning the estate's inhabitants are never pruriently revealed, the author building the horror through what he hides as much as by what he reveals. His careful prose is otherworldly, drawing us into the foreign setting (late Victorian England) and its supernatural weirdness. The story's brevity makes it an excellent introduction to James' fiction (which can be verbose and interminably long).

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.