2010, Book 11: The Turn of the Screw

I am generally a huge fan of the classics. However, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw was simply not my cup of tea. It was only 122 pages long, yet it took me almost 2 weeks to read. It was a ghost story, yet it was so tedious to read that I kept dozing off after a page or two of reading. I haven't been so bored while reading a book since I read Moby Dick my senior year of high school.

I'm not sure whether it was the fact that it was the most boring ghost story I have ever read or whether it was the fact that the mere 122 pages could have been cut in half if the book were less verbose. But something about it just did not suit my reading tastes. I picked it up expecting a haunting tale and instead I was just plain bored for two weeks.

The Turn of the Screw is the story of a young governess whose job is to oversee the care of a young girl in an isolated country home. She is given strict orders to never contact her boss, their uncle, for any reason because he cannot be bothered with them. She is also to care for the girl's older brother during his breaks from school. Very soon after arriving to her job she discovers that the children are being haunted by the spirits of the former governess and the former valet.

The governess, who is the narrator and who is also never named, begins experiencing the presences of these spirits and also realizes that the children are drawn to them and are not afraid. She is faced with the challenge of how to deal with both the presence of seemingly malicious spirits, as well as how to deal with the fondness her charges seem to have for them.

I know that all of that seems very exciting, however Henry James managed to make it exceedingly boring. The governess comes off as a simpleton when she is supposed to be the heroine. The children come off as flat characters where, in my opinion, they would have made excellent round characters. All in all, it is one of the most boring books I have ever read.

However, I don't mean to imply that it is not well written. It is very well written and I can see why The Turn of the Screw is a classic, it just happened to be one of two of the classics that I dislike. I'm hoping that number stays at two, as it breaks my heart to give a negative review to a book held in such high literary regard.