NaNoReMo

March was NaNoReMo - or National Novel Reading Month.  Specifically, a month for us to read a classic novel that for one reason or another we have been putting off.  Essentially NaNoReMo is a support system.  It isn't a book club and participants choose their own book - which may or may not be one read by other participants.  At the end (or earlier) participants blog or tweet about their experience.  I don't tweet, so blogging it is.

John Wiswell gave me the impetus to play and I have joined him, and others.

The classic I chose this time is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

 The novella was first published over a hundred years ago in 1898.  It has apparently been the subject of several film and television adaptions and a Benjamin Britten opera, all of which have passed me by.

It appears simple.  Members of a house-party are gathered around a fire on Christmas Eve, telling ghost stories.  One of the party says that he knows a truly terrible tale.  Pushed to share it, he says he has to send away for the written account.  Written not by him, but by his sister's governess.  A woman he obviously fell in love with.  A woman he respects and values.  He remained her friend until her death.

The story is duly sent for, and read to the houseparty.

It is written in the first person, by an unnamed young woman who has accepted her first position as a governess.  Her charges are two orphaned children.  Their parents died in India, and they were given into the guardianship of their uncle, our narrator's employer.

The children had been in the care of a young lady, who had died.  The little girl was currently being cared for by the housekeeper, and the boy had been sent to school - but was due to start holidays.

She accepts the position, but is told that she will have to go to the house in the country where he has placed them and she is to have supreme authority.  With a most peculiar condition.   '... she should never trouble him - but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself.'

The children are beautiful.  Angelic looking, intelligent, eager to please.  Our narrator is given a letter from the boy's headmaster which says that the school refuses to have him back after the holidays.  No reason is given - and she cannot contact her employer.  Miles is such a charming child that she assumes the headmaster made an error.

Soon she begins to feel a malign presence.  First she sees a man, where no man could be.  In consultation with the housekeeper she identifies him as Peter Quint, her employers valet - now deceased.  She is convinced that he wants the children.  Later, she sees a further apparition, Miss Jessel, the woman who had cared for the children and died. 

She becomes convinced that the children are  in mortal danger from the ghosts. 

Later she decides that the children are in cahoots with the apparitions and are deceiving her, charming and angelic as they seem.  She challenges the girl, wresting her away from Miss Tressel.  The girl becomes ill, and develops an immense distaste for and fear of the narrator.  She is sent away to her uncle, leaving the narrator alone with the boy.

Who dies, in the final confrontation between the governess and the spectre of the valet.

So we have a traumatised small girl, and a dead boy.  Why?  Who is responsible?  Is it our narrator, or the supernatural.  Will the small girl recover?  How did the governess explain the death of the other child?  And explain it she obviously did, because we know she continued to work as a governess.

This book reminded me of a jigsaw puzzle one of my brothers gave me.  A two sided jig-saw puzzle.  The picture on the front is identical to the picture on the back but has been rotated ninety degrees. 
As I try and put the pieces of the novella together, I can't help feeling that I am trying to squeeze pieces from one side of the puzzle into the other.  They simply don't fit, and don't add up.

Our narrator admits that she is impressionable.  I suspect her narrative is unreliable.  She becomes obsessive about keeping the children with either her or the house-keeper at all times.  Is she sane?  Or not?
No-one other than her sees (or admits to seeing) the ghosts.  Do they exist?  What do they want of the children?  My deliberations are not helped by the fact that my wandering mind is wondering what killed the parents in India...

Henry James himself apparently described it as a 'trap for the unwary'.

And trapped I assuredly became and remain, to the extent that I am not certain whether it is a ghost story, a story of supernatural possession or an illustration of obsession and insanity.

Has anyone else read it?  And what do you think?

I should add that I don't regret reading it.  Any work which leaves me wondering, thinking or questioning trumps a book which I close and forget.