(Read in The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Novels) 
 This review is for the story The Turn of the Screw, and not the whole book. I read that one first, and it will also be the last. If I recall, I found this book at the recycling center which has a book trading bin. That place is pretty awesome, and I've picked up some great books there. Unfortunately this wasn't one of them, and I kind of wish I'd left this one there. But only "kind of." I can now say I've at least tried Henry James. 
 If you start this novella (which I don't advise), be sure not to quit before the miracle happens. For me, the miracle occurred at chapter 17. Yes. 17. What was the miracle? That was the point where I stopped slogging though this book and was actually able to just read it. It was the point where something interesting finally happened, though it was just marginally interesting at that. (The kid showed he actually was a little shit and not a little darling). 
 The story was only 112 pages long, and I refused to let such a measly page count defeat me. Around page 25 or so I resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be a T-shirt book. I started it in October when I try to dedicate my reading to spooky things, and didn't finish it until the end of January. Three and a half months for 112 pages, and several books in between. That should give an idea of how much I enjoyed it. Call me presumptuous, but I'm of a mind that a ghost story should not threaten to put the reader to sleep every three or four pages. Granted, sometimes this occurred when I was bedding down for the night, but the time of day seems to have little bearing on whether or not this story made me nod off, for it happened during mid-afternoon breaks as well. 
 As for the miracle, the story doesn't get full credit for bringing it about. If I hadn't been bored torpid by a task at work, I never would've been excited to get back into this. Before, I was used to reading a chapter or two (the chapters are blessedly short), or perhaps as much as ten pages before putting this back down, and reading a different book. An entire different book. But today I managed to get the last 40 or so pages done. My work involves me sitting idle for two or three minutes at a stretch sometimes with nothing to do but look at stuff on the internet. Doing this is fine while the office machinery does what it does because it requires me to focus my attention on a computer monitor, but being seen reading a book? Nay, that looks bad, and we just can't have it. So, I've learned much by looking up any old thing, but sometimes I get bored with the same old/same old, and sometimes I finish entire websites. (By the by, I highly recommend Bad Reviews of Good Books; it is a scream). I finished reading everything that applied to me on that one yesterday, and was at a loss with what to do with the long day ahead of me. I wished there was a way I could just get Turn of the Screw out of the way, and then remembered the Gutenberg Project which posts whole books online. I was in luck! They had the thing on there and I was saved! Over the course of a few hours, I was able to get another 20 pages behind me online, and made the final push with the real book tonight after I got home, oh happy day. I was done with one of the worst literary bowel movements of my life. 
 Oh, where do I begin with my gripes? Let's start with a Mark Twain quote: "Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone." He's talking about Jane Austen, of course, but I now feel this way about Henry James. I don't think I'll ever read another one of his books, and much of it can be attributed to his abuse of the comma. I know a thing or two about overusing that bit of punctuation, and thankfully I have a friend who will rein me in when I get carried away, at least for things that are important. For this I'm immensely grateful. Henry James needed such a friend. I believe he just wrote his stuff, took a comma sort or type from an old typesetting set, attached it to a stick, dipped it ink, then mercilessly beat the page with it. Wherever a comma landed, it remained. Due to the continual offset phrases, his sentences read like someone who nearly stalled in first gear and is just bucking down the road, vroooo-a-cau-cau-cau-cau-cau-cau. Many of the phrases were completely unnecessary and did nothing but disturb what could've been a gentler flow. Or perhaps he was going for a mogul equivalent of prose? (The narrator is a panic attack prone nut, after all, and a hiccupy inner-monologue does suit her, but it's my understanding that he writes like this all the time). If such was his intention, he succeeded. At first I tried to rearrange the sentences in my head just to figure out what in the hell he was trying to say in any given statement. Later I quit because I didn't want to devote that much time to reading this thing. Eventually I found that if I just plowed through regardless of whether or not I completely understood what I was reading, I was still able to get the basic gist, but I think I might have missed some things. 
 Even though James wrote during the Victorian era, an era known for verbosity, he doesn't do it as well as many of his contemporaries. Oh, he has the garrulous aspect down pat, but it's not a pleasure to read the way Dickens, Hardy, Collins, Eliot, and some others are. I know I'm comparing him to the greats, but he's supposed to be counted among them. I'm afraid I just don't see it. There wasn't a single literary gem in this book that I could find; nary a witty nugget that made me chuckle out loud when I read it because it was so well stated. Don't get me wrong; I did laugh out loud a couple of times, but it was because I couldn't believe someone could be so wordy. The man managed to make a sentence go on for five or six lines, and still say nothing. This is forgivable, but only if the nuggets and gems are there. Most of Dickens' stories could be told in a quarter of the length, but they're a treat to read; James can't make that claim. Well, not with me, at least. I've seen other reviewers on here that love his style, and that's good. Just goes to show it really is different strokes for different folks. 
 The story itself: (view spoiler)[Before I discovered this on the Gutenberg Project site, I checked out the wikipedia entry on it just to find out what I must be missing, spoilers be damned because I just didn't give a shit anymore. So many people like it. Surely there's something here I'm just not getting. (And there was; I totally missed the whole the-ghosts-previously-sexually-molested-the-children subtext, but understand that people in England at that time would've picked up on it. It could be that that part hadn't been spelled out much yet, but I did start noticing it towards the end of the story. I don't know what I missed before, but damned if I'm going back to reread it just to find that). Here's a line from the wikipedia summary: "However, others have argued that the true brilliance of the novella comes with its ability to create an intimate confusion and suspense for the reader." Confusion: check. Suspense: 'fraid not (see the comma distraction above). It's apparently argued by people who care that either the governess (the narrator) is insane, or that there really are ghosts lurking about. For what it's worth I believe it's both, but the governess certainly is crazy. 
 This woman needs to chill the fuck out. She is the precursor to the modern day Anxiety Woman: able to leap to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound. Trust me on this. If anti-anxiety medication had been around in 1898, or whenever this is supposed to be taking place (1898 was the publication date), her shrink would've had her on every available variety. Towards the beginning, she's walking the grounds at her new job, sees a man she doesn't recognize standing on the other side of a field or something, and flips her shit with a panic attack. The fact that it does turn out to be a ghost is irrelevant to her reaction. She even goes out of her way to say that he looked like a real human being. Later, she sees the ten year old boy (one of her charges) standing out in the yard in the middle of the night, and she loses it. She's convinced he's communing with Satan, (or really being lured outside by the ghost of the man she saw earlier) or something. The next two chapters are devoted to how out of sorts she is, her fears on what the boy might say when she talks to him about it the next day, her paranoia about how the boy is manipulating her brain with some twisted word game during their conversation, her tears of joy and relief when he simply says "Oh, I was just being a bad boy by not being in my bed at bedtime," and how she hugs and kisses him for being a good boy by saying so. I don't know how the woman would make it through breakfast without having a stroke or aneurysm if one of the kids spilled his or her orange juice. I can see her thoughts now: "Orange juice on the tablecloth? Was it an accident? No, it must mean something sinister is afoot. Or was it a ruse to distract me while the girl passes a note to her brother under the table. Quick, I'll cut my eye in that direction. Damn, I missed it. Or perhaps it was a signal to the ghost? Spill three blotches on the table if you love me, two on the floor if the answer is no? Meet us in the hallway while this twit is trying to figure out the code? Well, I'm onto them, but I'm going to surreptitiously let them know that I might be onto them by sitting here and doing nothing save cutting my eyes to the window, blinking twice, and winking once, but ONLY WHEN THEY'RE NOT LOOKING AT ME! Let them wonder..." Good GOD, woman, GET A FUCKING GRIP! (hide spoiler)] 
 The story itself is good. Quite good, actually. So why only two stars? The author. I think I would've enjoyed it more had it been written by someone else. Henry James is to literature what Bob Dylan is to music; Bobby wrote some good songs, but really ought to let someone else sing them. But like I said: different strokes for different folks. I had to think long and hard before giving this two stars as my knee-jerk reaction was one. But the consensus on here is around three and a half for this story, so I'm the odd man out. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful in telling you whether or not you'd want to read this.