It probably deserves more than 3 stars, but that's what I'm giving it. I think I'm learning 'psychological horror' means 'too subtle for me when I'm in the mood for a Halloween story.'
There are some cool stories in this collection - Afterward, Bewitched and All Souls are not to be missed. Of equal interest are the preface, wherein Wharton notes that ghosts are in decline as the modern age gets more modern (they just don't fit well next to refrigerators and electric lights), and the ending note where she talks about where she learned to write about fear.
But many of the stories (The Eyes, The Looking Glass, and Pomegranate Seeds come to mind) felt like Sherlock Holmes stories with the last page missing - the part where Sherlock tells you who did what and why, and how he figured it out. I had to get online and find out what it all meant for several stories (thank you, Dung Beetle, for help with The Eyes in particular).
Here's a hint, if you read the book - if there's evidence of a ghost, and at the end of the story somebody's missing, it means that person 'went off to join the dead' with the ghost. Maybe that was understood when she was writing - just like everyone knows now that zombies want brains - but I didn't know it. And nobody explained it. The story just ends with the person missing.
Here's another hint, for the story Bewitched - it's Ethan Frome but shorter and more ghastly.
Look, lots of people whose opinions I respect like Edith Wharton more than I do - if you're one of them, you'll like the whole book. If not, I bet you still like some of these.
There are some cool stories in this collection - Afterward, Bewitched and All Souls are not to be missed. Of equal interest are the preface, wherein Wharton notes that ghosts are in decline as the modern age gets more modern (they just don't fit well next to refrigerators and electric lights), and the ending note where she talks about where she learned to write about fear.
But many of the stories (The Eyes, The Looking Glass, and Pomegranate Seeds come to mind) felt like Sherlock Holmes stories with the last page missing - the part where Sherlock tells you who did what and why, and how he figured it out. I had to get online and find out what it all meant for several stories (thank you, Dung Beetle, for help with The Eyes in particular).
Here's a hint, if you read the book - if there's evidence of a ghost, and at the end of the story somebody's missing, it means that person 'went off to join the dead' with the ghost. Maybe that was understood when she was writing - just like everyone knows now that zombies want brains - but I didn't know it. And nobody explained it. The story just ends with the person missing.
Here's another hint, for the story Bewitched - it's Ethan Frome but shorter and more ghastly.
Look, lots of people whose opinions I respect like Edith Wharton more than I do - if you're one of them, you'll like the whole book. If not, I bet you still like some of these.
