Category: Book Reviews

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I first started to read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James a few years ago soon after I bought it. I stopped reading, mainly, I think, because it seemed so slow to get going with long, convoluted sentences that seem to drag the story down. So, it was with low expectations that I began once more to read it. I was surprised. This time the story didn’t drag, the sentence structure didn’t bother me and I became engrossed in the tale. It’s an ideal book for the RIP Challenge.

The Turn of the Screw

But is it a ghost story or a psychological study? Either way there are creepy, disturbing things going on. It’s a story within a story, told as a ghost story to a group of people as they sit gathered round a fire in an old house. It tells of two children and their governess. She has been employed by their uncle who wants nothing to do with them. Their previous governess had died under mysterious circumstances (was it in childbirth?).  The older child, Miles, was away at school and soon after the new governess arrives Miles returns home, expelled from school for some terrible unexplained offence.

The children seem to the governess to be beautiful, little angels, but are they as innocent as they seem? And can they see the ghosts or not? Is the governess imagining them, peering in menacingly through the windows, standing silently and staring from the top of a tower, or gazing intently across a lake. Are they the ghosts of Miss Jessel, the previous governess and Peter Quint, also a previous employer? What relationship did they have with the children? Do they still have a hold over the children? These questions are never fully answered and the governess, aided (or not?) by the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, becomes increasingly unhinged by all the events. I think it’s all the better for the ambiguity.

The story is dark and melodramatic, about good and evil and with hints of sexual relations, reflecting the Victorian society of the time. The Turn of the Screw is based on a ghost story told to James by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson. It was first published in 12 instalments in Collier’s Weekly, a popular,  illustrated New York magazine in 1898.  By that time his wrist was too painful to actually write the story and he dictated  it to his secretary, William MacAlpine, who typed as James spoke.

My copy of the book  is in the Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series, edited by Peter G Beidler. It contains not just the text, but critical essays from four contemporary critical perspectives, plus explanations of the biographical, historical and cultural contexts. I haven’t yet read much of the additional material as I wanted to see what I made of it myself. Just scanning the essays I think they show the widely different interpretations and controversies this book has aroused and should prove very interesting reading.

The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

I finished reading The House of Stairs, the  third psychological thriller by Barbara Vine yesterday. It is a most remarkable book, in that it turns a murder mystery upside down, as it were. It is clear from the start that there has been a murder and the murderer is known – she has just been released from prison. But who did she murder? Why, where, when and how? The other characters all know – but not the reader.

The crime is only revealed very gradually, building up the suspense and tension in a series of flashbacks, as you realise the how, the where and the when, but only by inference – guesswork on my part really. The why too, can be worked out, but as for the who – I kept changing my mind, only finally deciding it must be this person, just a few pages before the denouement.  Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara  Vine certainly sets a puzzle, a tangled web of characters, situations, and psychological profiles. And, of course, there is a certain ambiguity right at the end. It’s not a book you can read quickly, but it certainly kept me turning the pages wanting to know what had happened.

The first person narrator is Elizabeth, who is told a terrible secret about her mother and lives her life as a consequence in fear of inheriting the family disease. At the beginning of the book she sees her old friend Bell, and follows her at a short distance, not sure it really is her. It gives her a sense of unease and a quiver of panic bringing back memories of earlier events that had resulted in Bell’s imprisonment for murder fourteen years ago.

She and Bell and a number of other characters (who come and go) lived with Cosette in the House of Stairs, so called because it’s a big house on five floors with a staircase of 106 stairs.  Cosette had been married to Elizabeth’s mother’s cousin and they came to view each other as mother and daughter. Cosette is a caring character, very tolerant and easy-going, one who welcomes other people into her home, who listens to them and leaves them feeling revitalized. Bell, however, is cold and uncaring. The menace is felt as Bell climbs the stairs to her room on the top floor, the 104th step creaking as she does so and enters the room, the room with the dangerous window that came down to no more than six inches or so from the floor (page 121).

There is so much I could write about this book. For one thing there are various allusions to Henry James’s work, which Elizabeth is studying hoping to write a thesis about James – to say any more would be to reveal too much.  Another allusion is to Tennyson’s poem Mariana and one that interested me greatly to a painting by Bronzino of Lucrezia Panciatichi, dressed in a beautiful red gown. It reminds Elizabeth of Bell, and when she wears a similar red dress found in Cosette’s belongings the resemblance is striking. I found a reproduction of the painting on Wikipedia:

Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (circa 1540), Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Lucrezia Panciatichi by Angelo Bronzino

Elizabeth has a thought, which struck me as particularly chilling. She looks at people

… wondering which of them, if any, are like her. I mean like her in that they have killed someone and been sent to prison for it, served their sentence and come out again. It is a new phenomenon. Murderers used to be hanged.

Now they are set free and come back to live among us. Or to exist. I look at people and I wonder. … ordinary people looking like everyone else, having ordinary jobs, perhaps living next door. (page 212)

The House of Stairs:

  • Paperback: 282 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin 1989
  • Source: I bought the book (a secondhand copy)
  • Rating 4/5

Barbara Vine’s earlier psychological thrillers are:

Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Notes

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

These are my thoughts and reactions on reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I knew the story of Dracula from film and TV versions – with most notably Christopher Lee and later Louis Jourdan as Dracula, but have steered clear of reading Bram Stoker’s book until now. I didn’t really know what to expect from the book but I was interested to know how Stoker described Dracula, was it anything like the film versions? This is what he looked like when Jonathan Harker first entered Castle Dracula:

… a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.

… he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength that made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice – more like the hand of a dead man than a living man.

… His face was a strong – a very strong – aquiline, with high bridge of nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily around the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over his nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. (pages 22 – 25)

Not like the film versions I’ve seen.

Dracula is composed of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and transcripts of phonograph diary entries, from several characters, so the story is told from several different viewpoints. Stoker used a variety of sources in telling his tale – folklore, myths and legends and historical facts, all blended together with his own inventions. It’s a very scenic novel, and I could easily imagine the locations  – most memorable are those describing Jonathan Harker’s journey and first meeting with Dracula. Dracula doesn’t eat and has no reflection in a mirror, can change his shape dramatically and grows younger, but apart from the opening chapters he remains an elusive figure.

It’s also a very sensual and melodramatic novel, full of religious references. So there is the question of life after death, the existence of the soul, the triumph of good over evil, the nature of sexuality,  fear and superstition. Vampires are at the same time appealing and repulsive. Much use is made of hypnotism and putting people into trances. I was struck by the comparison with Christianity – Dracula drinks the blood of his victims and has everlasting life as one of the Un-Dead and Christ gave his life to redeem the world. It reminded me of the Communion Service – this is my body, this is my blood.

It is too an adventure story with a final chase scene and a love story. It reflects the time in which it was written, with women seen as frail creatures unable to withstand the danger that the men confront. Mina Harker, that most resourceful woman, is left behind whilst the men seek out Dracula and plan to kill him. I was puzzled – why was she left alone with no cross and garlic flowers to protect her when the men were fully armed? The outcome was predictable.

I found the character of Renfield most interesting. He is one of Dr Seward’s most dangerous patients in the lunatic asylum, who wavers between lucid and intelligent episodes and sheer madness. His hobby is catching flies and eating them. He progresses to eating spiders and birds.

I thought it was a fascinating book, found it thought-provoking, both whilst I was reading and after. A book which certainly qualifies for the RIP Challenge.

A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

I wrote about the beginning of Margaret Drabble’s first novel A Summer Bird-Cage last Friday. I finished reading it only four days ago and already my memory of it is fading. I really should have made notes or at least marked pages with post-it notes, because there were so many passages I wanted to remember, but I read it too quickly to pause long enough for that.

The title comes from this quotation from John Webster’s play The White Devil:

‘Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.

I think  this sums up my impression of the book as a whole – it’s about dissatisfaction and not knowing what you want, about family relationships (sisterly rivalry in particular), and the nature of marriage – the cages we live within. Drabble illustrates this through her depiction of two sisters, both on the brink of changes in their lives – the younger sister Sarah, recently down from Oxford University and completely at a loss what to do with her life, and Louise, the ‘beautiful’ one, marrying for money not for love, equally floundering and mixed-up about her life.  Sarah, the narrator, can’t understand why Louise has  married the unlikeable Stephen and it soon becomes apparent that Louise is having an affair with John Connell, an actor.

The two sisters do not get on. Sarah says:

I used to laugh at her with my school-friends, to borrow her clothes without asking, and to steal her books. Once I read her diary. She would have read mine, had I kept one. In the end she taught me the art of competition, and this is what I really hold against her: I think I had as little desire to outdo others in my nature as a person can have, until she insisted on demonstrating her superiority. She taught me to want to outdo her.  And when, occasionally, I did so, her anger hurt me, but as I had won it by labour from indifference, I treasured it. And when, finally, I took over one of her men at Oxford, the game was out in the open, I thought, for the rest of our lives. (page 103)

Their mother is also dissatisfied with her life, who is not at all happy when Sarah decides she wants to live in London, sharing a flat with her friend, Gill, not liking the idea of her not having a ‘proper job’.  She admits. however, that as it’s Sarah’s own life and grudgingly says that no one can accuse her of trying to keep her at home – which, of course, she is. Sarah describes her as

… poor brave twittering Mama, pretending everything has been so lovely, ignoring the facts because they were the only ones she knew. (page 21)

Whilst not a lot as regards plot happens in this short novel, it contains many ideas, attitudes and character studies. And it’s beautifully written, such as in this passage:

It was a wonderful blue cold day, with the last yellow leaves reprieved in the terrace of plane trees by the bus stop: almost one of those aqueous and lunar days when everything is charged with its own clarity. The colours of the houses and the brick were glowing and profound, and the small children playing in the streets looked as though they were on their way to an entrancing future. (page 81)

I think I’d like to re-read it one day.

Note: the cover shown above is my own copy, a Penguin edition, reprinted in 1967, which I bought secondhand.

The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths is the third Ruth Galloway Investigation. I enjoyed the first two more than this last one. I found the use of the present tense in this book grated on me more than the other two and I thought the mystery element less than satisfactory – I solved it straight away! But having said all that it was still an enjoyable book, because of the characters.

It’s all about Ruth, her job as a forensic archaeologist, her baby and its father, and how she copes with juggling work and bringing up a child, or rather how she struggles with it all.

The bones of six people are found in a gap in the cliff, a sort of ravine, where there had been a rock fall at Broughton Sea’s End. Sea’s End House stands perilously close to the cliff edge above the beach.

High up on the furthest point of the cliff, is a grey stone house, faintly gothic in style, with battlements and a curved tower facing out to sea. A Union Jack is flying from the tower. (location 51)

These bones aren’t as ancient as those Ruth usually investigates and date back to about fifty or sixty years earlier. Chemical tests indicate they are of German origin and there are local stories about strange happenings concerning the Home Guard during the war. The captain of the Home Guard was Buster Hastings, the father of the current owner of Seas End House, Jack Hastings. Does he know more than he is admitting?  Added to this mystery there is also the death of Dieter Eckhart, an investigative journalist to solve. Who wanted him dead and why?

This brings DCI Harry Nelson into the picture and as in the earlier books Ruth is drawn into great danger as she delves further into both mysteries. Other characters from the earlier books are also here – Ruth’s friends, Shona and Cathbad, the part-time Druid. I found some of the back stories slowed the action down too much for my liking and I just wanted it to move along. I found this at odds with the present tense, which does rush my reading. I really, really do wish these books weren’t written in the present tense!

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 475 KB
  • Print Length: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Quercus (6 Jan 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004MME2H4
  • Source: I bought it

Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I enjoyed Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood, on several levels. There is the murder and mystery level, but also a great sense of the times, set in post-war Britain, reflecting the mood of the population, and, on top of all, that the characters stand out for the most part as well-rounded, convincing people. There are plenty of references to the changing social scene, to the attitude towards women and foreigners and to the difficulties  of war heroes adapting to civilian life.

It was published in 1948, when the aftermath of the war is felt by some people as a restless dissatisfaction with life,  feeling ‘rudderless’ just drifting along and by others, who had ‘come into their own’ during the war, benefiting from the need to plan and think and improvise for themselves.

Lynn Marchmont is one of the people feeling ill at ease and nervous; she was aware of ill will, ill feeling:

It’s everywhere. On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural labourers. And I suppose worse in mines and factories. Ill will. But here it’s more than that. Here it’s particular. It’s meant! (page 65)

There is certainly ill will in her family after her uncle, Gordon Cloade had died, killed in an air raid, and left the rest of the family ‘out in the cold’. They had all relied on him to help them out financially and expected they would inherit his wealth on his death. But Gordon had married Rosaleen, a young woman, whose brother, David Hunter has no intention of letting any of them have any money. Rosaleen has a chequered past and when a tall, bronzed stranger arrives in the village calling himself Enoch Arden, the question of his identity becomes of great importance. I didn’t know the reference to Enoch Arden, but knew it must be of significance when it stirs some poetical memory in David’s mind, from a poem by Tennyson. Then Enoch Arden is found in his room at the local inn, The Stag:

‘Dead as a doornail,’ said Gladys, and added with a certain relish: ‘ ‘Is ‘ead’s bashed in!’ (page 161)

Poirot is called in to help solve the crime. Was Enoch Arden was Rosaleen’s first husband, Robert Underhay or had Robert died in Africa, as she said? Would the family fortune remain with the Cloades? Is Rosaleen’s life in danger, are the Cloades wishing her dead?

It’s a baffling case and Poirot tells Superintendent Spence that it’s an interesting case, because it’s all wrong – it’s not the ‘right shape.’ Eventually, of course, he works it out and it is complicated as Spence complains, protesting when Poirot quotes Shakespeare. Poirot, however, explains that it is very Shakespearian:

… there are here all the emotions – the human emotions – in which Shakespeare would have revelled – the jealousies, the hates – the swift passionate actions. And here, too, is successful opportunism. “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its flood leads on to fortune …” Someone acted on that, Superintendent. To seize opportunity and turn it to one’s own ends – and that has been triumphantly accomplished – under your nose, so to speak!’ (page 319)