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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
Read it out of a sense of obligation to all haunted house stories that followed. I regret this decision. Completely uninteresting, absurd period of British history captured in this book: people of different classes hooking up (gasp, the horror!), misbehaving children (the drama!), and many other empty concerns from the characters (that would be spoilers).
Hard to take any of the stakes seriously b/c the characters are both dull and overly dramatic.
Hard to take any of the stakes seriously b/c the characters are both dull and overly dramatic.
medium-paced
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
No
This novel, better than any others I have ever read, captures the essence of the Victorian worldview, right down to the significance of the characters' hair colors. The Victorians were preoccupied with creating polite society; yet things that could not be spoken of in polite society happened anyway. This novel demonstrates that fear – of the unknown, of the gruesome or horrible or sexual, of the ways in which repressed things spring up anyway, of the fragile artificiality of their tranquility.
medium-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i like it. It’s a short book so I found patience with the parts that were challenging to me - the writing style, the unanswered questions. If I’d read 300 pages to get to the final result, I would have been frustrated. But….I’m not. Mr James knew what he was doing.
A pesar de lo ambiguo que es todo, me pareció una buena historia, poco fiable tal vez, pero que entretiene a traves de pocas páginas.
Tuve que detenerme a leer dos veces el final porque no entendía del todo, hasta que caí en cuenta que negar o aceptar la existencia de estos entes solo cambiaba el contexto e interpretación.
Tuve que detenerme a leer dos veces el final porque no entendía del todo, hasta que caí en cuenta que negar o aceptar la existencia de estos entes solo cambiaba el contexto e interpretación.
Ugh. UGH. I'm fairly certain that "The Turn of the Screw" refers to the sensation you get in the back of your mind while reading this story. Henry James looked at the idea of a haunted house and thought "What if I made this with a cast of characters that nobody could possibly like, try to convince everybody that the story is scary by having ghosts just sort of...stand there, far away from anyone, and do nothing, but *also* use such language as to render it almost unreadable?"
Good(?) news: he succeeded!
The narrator may actually be the worst child care provider I've seen outside of the Disney "wicked stepmother" trope, the two kids (whose ages range anywhere from "toddler" to "teenager" depending where in the text you are) only speak the way adults speak if they've never met a child in their entire lives, and in fact don't talk to anyone under the age of 55 (and even then only in formal academic settings), and the ghosts sort of just stand around looking ugly. Allegedly there's a death at the end, but I frankly couldn't make it. I can't afford to be falling asleep every time I try to read, and that's what The Turn of the Screw did to me. I still made it something like 85% of the way through the story, and the promise of a death still wasn't enough for me to keep going.
Unless you really don't like yourself, keep your distance. You can do better. I promise. Don't let literature professors trick you into this thing. I promise you can do better.
Good(?) news: he succeeded!
The narrator may actually be the worst child care provider I've seen outside of the Disney "wicked stepmother" trope, the two kids (whose ages range anywhere from "toddler" to "teenager" depending where in the text you are) only speak the way adults speak if they've never met a child in their entire lives, and in fact don't talk to anyone under the age of 55 (and even then only in formal academic settings), and the ghosts sort of just stand around looking ugly. Allegedly there's a death at the end, but I frankly couldn't make it. I can't afford to be falling asleep every time I try to read, and that's what The Turn of the Screw did to me. I still made it something like 85% of the way through the story, and the promise of a death still wasn't enough for me to keep going.
Unless you really don't like yourself, keep your distance. You can do better. I promise. Don't let literature professors trick you into this thing. I promise you can do better.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
