Reviews

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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marleigh_a's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

littlehauntedlibrary's review against another edition

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3.0

3/5

+Classic horror
+creepy kids
+isolated setting

-I'm glad that I watched Bly Manor before listening to this, it helped keep characters and events in line. I have a hard time with older styles of writing, I will easily drown it all out if I'm not careful to really pay attention

celestecorrea's review against another edition

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4.0

Gostei muito do livro, embora não o tenha entendido verdadeiramente.
Mas, calafrios terríveis senti e não foram poucos. Relativamente à escrita, este foi - dos seis livros que li do autor - a mais difícil de todas. A reler...de calafrio em calafrio, um dia encontrarei uma interpretação que sirva os meus interesses individuais; talvez a finalidade de James não fosse gerar consensos, e o livro foi um sucesso à data da sua publicação.

mittland's review against another edition

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3.0

read this with my brother in our 2-man book club and I was amazed that we had entirely different interpretations of what's going on here. I think the class & gender analysis you can make here is interesting but the book itself didn't do much for me except in a select few scenes

queeneallie's review against another edition

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Oh man, Gothic literature......they take so long to say so little.

book_busy's review against another edition

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3.0

An enjoyable but not spectacularly gripping read. It was spooky I suppose but no Carmilla. I may have to re-read to see whether I just didn't quite get it.

baebebluejay's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

Overall, this book was incredibly dull and disappointing. There was nothing scary about this book at all and the writing made it unenjoyable to read. James would start a sentence with an idea, drag it on with endless commas and then end the sentence with an unrelated idea that left you completely disorientated. Some writers can do that really well and add to the atmosphere of the text but with James it just came off as if he didn’t know how to write. This book comes no where near any Shirley Jackson (particularly the haunting of hill house) who is a true master of the horror genre. The recent Netflix series created off this text was also extremely boring and tedious that I could not finish it. The only reason I finished the book was because it was under 200 pages, otherwise I would have totally DNF’ed.

Content Warnings