Book Review: The Turn of the Screw

So about a year ago my friend SP and I started a book club together. It’s actually not that hard to start a book club. We have four members – most websites say not to get more than eight or you are too big to accomplish much. We meet once a month and rotate who picks the book and where to meet. Usually whoever hosts/picks the book doesn’t really do much other than have to clean and set out a few apps and everyone else brings wine and some food to munch on.

It’s been a lot of fun doing the book club. One it’s always nice to have an excuse to meet up with friends and two we’ve read a lot of really interesting books that we might not have read otherwise. It’s interesting to see what different people pick as their book. We actually have real discussions too – about what we thought of the book, why the author did certain things, etc. If you like to read and have a group of friends that might be interested I highly recommend starting your own club.

This month’s book was Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. I’m not sure I would have picked this book myself. Nothing against James, but the synopsis on the back didn’t sound like something I would have pulled off the library shelves. The book (and I’m not giving too much away here) is about a governess who goes to teach two small children only to find the house is haunted – or is it? The age old debate has been is the governess crazy or is the house really haunted? Wikipedia has a short version of the different theories or do a quick Google search and you can read more.

The Turn of the Screw is a good book. It’s very short – maybe a 120 pages and it moves relatively fast but the writing style can be difficult to read – think Charles Dickens. Does this mean we are lazy if we think its difficult to read? I will say in my defense I don’t think Jane Austen is hard to read once you get the hang of how the characters talk.

I got hooked the first few pages, wanting to know what happened but as I got towards the middle I had to take breaks – it’s not exactly light reading during your lunch break at work. I like open-ended books, when I write short stories I tend to leave them open-ended but The Turn of the Screw frustrated me. I felt like at the end nothing was resolved and that damaged my overall impression of the book as a whole.

We had a really good discussion on our theories of the book. One of the ladies thought that maybe Douglas (the man with the transcript of what happened) was really Miles and that the governess really died at the end not Miles. I personally felt like the governess was probably crazy since no one else saw the ghosts and she was so adamant that the children were cavorting with ghost even without proof. If you read it – I’d like to know what you think as well.