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holly_moward 's review for:
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Much creepier than I’d anticipated. I admit to being one of the jerks who watched The Haunting of Bly Manor before remembering, “Oh yeah… The Turn of the Screw…” (Sorry, Henry James.) The show, by the way, takes such grotesque liberties with this defenseless little novella that it ought to be tried in Literary Court. I will say that even though I think Netflix’s take on this book is heinous, I did find repeatedly myself wanting to “see” the story, or a faithful adaptation of it. It’s such a creepy ghost story that I can imagine a film version being terrifying!
This is a dense, purposefully muddled read, the paranoid energy of which is intended to increase the stress and confusion of the reader — i.e. “turning the screws.” Hard to slog through until you get the rhythm of the diction, and probably something I should’ve read more slowly and carefully. My one mild complaint about late Victorian/Gothic literature is that they all have so much scaffolding involved. The POV is from someone at a party listening to a story being told by someone who’s reading the narrative account, which ends up being the novella itself. Just start the story, folks.
Good read all around. I wish I’d studied this one in school so I could talk to someone about it and write essays on diction and whatever else. One thing I’d definitely be writing an essay on: the running subtext of sexualizing children? Uncomfy, but definitely present.
This is a dense, purposefully muddled read, the paranoid energy of which is intended to increase the stress and confusion of the reader — i.e. “turning the screws.” Hard to slog through until you get the rhythm of the diction, and probably something I should’ve read more slowly and carefully. My one mild complaint about late Victorian/Gothic literature is that they all have so much scaffolding involved. The POV is from someone at a party listening to a story being told by someone who’s reading the narrative account, which ends up being the novella itself. Just start the story, folks.
Good read all around. I wish I’d studied this one in school so I could talk to someone about it and write essays on diction and whatever else. One thing I’d definitely be writing an essay on: the running subtext of sexualizing children? Uncomfy, but definitely present.