The Turn of the Screw

There's something about October that makes me want to read scary stories. I love Halloween and I find that I get in a spooky sort of mood pretty early on in the month. Since I was also in the middle of prepping for a trip to the UK, it made sense that I'd be drawn to a story that took place in England.

A man has been given charge of his niece and nephew, Flora and Miles, after their parents die. He hires a governess to look after them at an estate in Essex. He leaves them completely in her care and makes it very clear that he doesn't want to be disturbed with the details of their care. She meets the children and is quickly charmed by both of them. The boy has returned from boarding school along with notice that he's actually been expelled. This is the first of several situations that has no full explanation. The governess develops a theory that it must be a horrible circumstance leading up to the expulsion, and she begins to look at the children differently.

The governess begins to see and hear things that don't make sense. Figures appear at windows and in hallways, even on the balconies of the house. they seem  to have some sinister connection to the children. What makes them sinister is their ordinariness. It's the every day nature of the ghosts that makes them frightening. The ghosts are the previous governess and one of the male employees who had a relationship with each other, and both passed away. Again, nothing is spelled out entirely, but there are many implications made about these two people, their relationship with each other, and their conduct towards the children and the other members of the household.

The governess convinces herself that these ghosts are after the children and mean to take them away. She confronts Flora about seeing her with the ghost of the former governess and Flora denies any sort of contact with or existence of a ghost. She turns against the governess and says she never wants to see her again. The governess and the housekeeper agree that the girl should go be with her uncle for a time. The governess and Miles are alone later that night and the other ghost appears. The governess tries to persuade the boy that he's not under the ghost's control only to find that he has died in her arms.

The thing I enjoyed most about The turn of the Screw by Henry James is the same thing that many readers don't like. You just never know if what the governess sees is real. There's no explanation at the end, there's no nice tying up of the loose ends, there's no tidy closure. You as the reader are left guessing whether everything the governess thinks she saw actually happened or if she had some sort of breakdown and put the children in danger herself.

I have to be honest when I say that I'm not sure which answer I think is real. I like the idea of the governess going insane or even just starting off that way. The more I think about it, the more I like that it isn't completely answered. I think what makes the work stand out from so many other stories and still interesting over 100 years after it was written is that the mystery is left unsolved. Solving it would take away something essential to the story.

Gone Girl

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I'm a little late to the party when it comes to reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Chances are you've heard the buzz about this book already. Let me just say that all the buzz is well deserved.

I didn't want to step away from the story. The characters had so much depth and so much of that depth was various levels of crazy. I loved reading them while at the same time I didn't like them. I find that to be a very difficult balance and I'm always impressed with an author who can manage to make it happen.

I opted to listen to this book instead of reading it and I think the narrators did a fantastic job bringing Amy and Nick to life. I actually looked forward to cleaning out my closets over the weekend because I knew it would be my chance to finish the story and I couldn't wait to see how Ms. Flynn was going to end it.

It should go without saying that there are going to be spoilers in this and any review I do, but just in case...

I loved her critique on the roll the media plays in the news and defining what's true. Everything gets sensationalized so much and we look for a good story more than the truth sometimes. At first I just thought Nick was awkward and had some unfortunate moments in front of the camera. I quickly started to think that there was more to his actions than what he was letting on in his narrative since withholding information seemed to be so much of what he was doing.

My jaw hit the floor when I finally grasped the extent of Amy's plan and her repeated pattern of completely destroying those who got in the way of what she wanted and wouldn't force themselves to fit into the role she had designed for them. To take so much time to plan out all the details of the disappearance and to leave so many open options as back up is so far beyond anything that I could imagine. It's like everyone was disposable to her once they no longer fit into her vision.

Poor, Desi. I mean he wasn't exactly a night in shining armor, but I don't think he deserved what Amy did to him. Plus I loved the idea that she was going to fake her own murder and then wind up as Desi's prisoner. Payback being a bitch and all. What I liked about him was that he clearly wasn't afraid of Amy and was willing to make her pay for what she did to him unlike the others from her past. In reality their responses of just moving on and keeping their distance were the right choice, but that doesn't make for very exciting reading.

Not that Nick was perfect. I wanted to like him, and I did for a while. But then we found out about his affair and he was much less likable. I kept waiting for there to be more to it, or for him to turn the tables and actually kill Amy. I like the way it was written much better than what I had in mind, though.

I may be the only one I know who liked the ending. It left me a little disturbed and almost physically feeling cold, which is exactly what I liked about it. Neither one of them is truly happy with how things ended up, and I'm going to assume that both will continue plotting against each other for as long as they can.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads- something I haven't done in a long time.