Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 11/10/2008 + 1223 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 5

I started to read this short novel when I was in high school over 40 years ago. I had always meant to get back to it and finally at Halloween this year, I decided to do so. Well - not sure what to say. The late-Victorian prose of James was, at times, very hard to decipher. The story itself was very unsettling and left you with a lot of ambiguities and unanswered questions. There were hints of homosexuality, pedophilia, illicit love affairs, and other sorts of assorted evils; however, they were only hints - the reader is left to make his/her own interpretations. And then there were the ghosts that presented themselves only to the governess - were these all in her mind or did the children also perceive the spirits as the governess insisted? Like I said earlier, the language was very hard to interpret. I decided to use SparkNotes as I was reading this to make sure I was making the correct interpretations of the text. I would recommend this to other readers. Overall, an interesting short novel (only 134 pages).

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