" Another book makes me feel like an idiot ... I recently saw a two-actor play based on the book and was creeped out beyond words, so I couldn't wait to read the book. Honestly, had I not seen the play, I would have no gorram clue what was going on in this book. First, it wasn't creepy at all (except maybe Jessel on the stair). Second, the governess just leapt to wild conclusions, supporting the theory that she's crazy, but there was little else to suggest it was all imagined. There was no resolution to anything - the book starts out with a lengthy (9-page) description of the man getting the manuscript and putting off telling the story, and yet James never returns to that. We never go back to the uncle, or any explanation of why he doesn't want to hear about the children. We never find out why Miles was expelled, or what Jessel and Quint did to the children. Maybe if I lived in the 1890's, I would understand the extremely vague references. I just felt so dissatisfied by this novel. It seemed like a first draft. There are all these theories about what the book is about, probably because it's so confusing. What if James didn't make it such a mystery on purpose? Maybe he just did a bad job.
I loved the writing, I loved the voice of the governess. In that sense, it was well-written and enjoyable, but as a story, it just seemed so incomplete to me. It was reminiscent of The Woman in White, which also was supposedly this huge, classic mystery, but just fell flat. At least Turn of the Screw was a good length and didn't have 300 filler pages like WIW. "
— Lynette, 11/21/2013