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    The Turning
    The Turning
    The Turning
    Ebook180 pages3 hours

    The Turning

    By Francine Prose

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    A dark house.
    An isolated island.
    Strange dreams
    and even stranger
    visions . . .

    Jack is spending the summer on a private island far from modern conveniences. No Wi-Fi, no cell service, no one else on the island but a housekeeper and the two very peculiar children in his care. The first time Jack sees the huge black mansion atop a windswept hill, he senses something cold, something more sinister than even the dark house itself.

    Soon, he feels terribly isolated and alone. Yet he is not alone. The house has visitors—peering in the windows, staring from across the shore. But why doesn't anyone else see them . . . and what do they want? As secrets are revealed and darker truths surface, Jack desperately struggles to maintain a grip on reality. He knows what he sees, and he isn't crazy. . . . Or is he?

    From nationally acclaimed author Francine Prose comes a mind-bending story that will leave you realizing how subtle the lines that separate reality, imagination, and insanity really are.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateSep 25, 2012
    ISBN9780062190284
    Author

    Francine Prose

    Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

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    Reviews for The Turning

    3/5

    17 ratings15 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't. The character building was fantastic, but the writing and delivery were all wrong for our modern setting and the social constructs that society operates under.

      The neverending, almost formal, letter format via which the narrator tells the story is the killing blow for this novel.

      Potential fantastic....delivery epic fail.
    • 4/5
      When I was in High School we had to read Turn of the Screw for my Gothic Literature class. I loved the novel because we had to figure out if the main character was crazy or if something paranormal was occurring (I thought she was crazy). I was so excited when I found out that Francine Prose was writing a retelling of the story called The Turning.The Turning posses the same qualities that makes the original story so awesome—the question of the character’s sanity. While I do still think that Jack from The Turning is out of his mind, I had a harder time deciding if he was crazy. While there are so many events that make me think he is a basket case, there were a few instances where I had to admit to myself that Jack might be right about the things that occurred on the island.It is so tempting to launch into a critical analysis of each spooky aspect of the book and explain why I think Jack is insane. However, it is obviously impossible to do that without ruining the book for those who have not read it. Suffice it to say that The Turning is an excellent novel and perfect for fans of unreliable narrators.
    • 4/5
      Jack is to take care of to young children on a secluded island for the summer. Great ghost story, the ending is a bit different than I would have thought. The story is told by writen letters to his father and girlfriend, nice choice of story telling.
    • 3/5
      A retelling of Henry James' Turn of the Screw. Jack decides to take a job babysitting 2 kids on an isolated island for the summer, to earn enough money to go to the same college as his girlfriend. As her writes letters to her, he reveals strange mysteries surrounding the children and the house; the children are often secretive and seem to be communicating with each other through glances, he finds out what happened to the previous babysitter, and he starts to see ghosts. This makes him increasingly paranoid about his relationship back home and with the kids. Eventually he falls into a fever, making it up to the reader to decide if he's just hallucinating or really interacting with a ghost.
    • 3/5
      Jack has taken a job babysitting for the summer in hopes of saving up some money so he can afford to go to the same college as his girlfriend, Sophie. Babysitting doesn’t sound like much fun, especially when he has to spend his summer on an island cut off from civilization. Not only that, but the ferry only visits three times a week, he’ll have no phone, no internet and no television. The job seems a bit out of sorts — a wealthy man has asked Jack to watch his orphaned niece and nephew, the uncle will not be on the island, and if there are any problems, he expects Jack and the live-in housekeeper to take care of them. He doesn’t want to be bothered. Jack is tempted to say no, but the amount of money he’s offered is enough for him to agree to the job.When he arrives at the island, he’s happy to find that the housekeeper, Mrs. Gross, seems very normal and kind. The children, though, are slightly peculiar. They dress as though they’re from a different era and they are very quiet and reserved. He begins to sense something is off after a few days. There’s a locked room in the house, the children seem to share some unnerving secret and there are two people on the island that it seems only he can see. Is Jack imagining things, or is there something dark and dangerous lurking in the shadows?I’m a HUGE fan of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I’ve read it countless times, and we produced the stage version at the theatre where I work a few years ago. It’s a chilling tale of haunting and madness. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps. I had really high hopes for this one since it is a modern retelling of that book. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. The basic story was still there, even though Ms. Prose updated it to modern times and made the governess from the original into a teen boy. The ending was also changed, and while it was okay, it felt rushed and didn’t carry the same punch as the original.This novel is written as a series of letters, mainly from Jack to his girlfriend, Sophie. There are a few other letters peppered between the pages, but most are from Jack. I think my biggest problem was that Jack didn’t feel authentic. I just didn’t see a teen boy today speaking (or in this case, writing) the way Jack did. His phrases and word choice often didn’t work, and it really got on my nerves when he would call out Sophie by name in his letters. It would go something like, “Can you believe that, Sophie?” (This isn’t an exact quote, just an example). I wasn’t sure why that was necessary. He addressed her when he opened the letter, so we know to whom he is writing. It seems pretty trivial, but it bugged me.I did like the children in the book, and I felt they were just as “off” as in the original story. Sadly, they were the two most interesting characters, and I wanted more from them.This is a quick read at just under 300 pages, and if you’re not familiar with the original story, you may enjoy it more than I did. Maybe I was just too close to the original to really get into it.
    • 5/5
      What an awesomely creepy book!!!!!
    • 3/5
      In a modern take on The Turn of the Screw, Jack has been hired to spend the summer on an island, in charge of two children. But as Jack spends more time isolated from the outside world, with Flora and Miles and their strange ways, he begins to see things that don't make sense--things that seem to fit all too well into the ghost stories he's been told.The Turn of the Screw is one of my all-time favorite books, so I always excited to read any sort of take on it. This was a creepy read that had some very suspenseful moments.This book just didn't live up to what I was hoping for. This could definitely be due in part to my love of the original source material and how hard it would be for any other take to live up to the original story. But this book felt rushed to me, as if Prose was making up for the slow beginning by cramming the main events in too quickly. Character changes came so fast, and not in the creepy amazing way the original used to create paranoia of the paranormal. Jack's sudden changes didn't make sense, and the ghost aspect almost felt just thrown in at those parts to explain why Jack was so different all of a sudden. I don't think it was the physical shortness of the book either, as The Turn of the Screw is not a long book itself, and still manages to spin an incredibly complex and suspenseful tale.The ending also felt cliched, and didn't really live up to the build up.This is not a bad book, but it's not a great one. It's a quick and easy read if you're intrigued enough by the premise, like I was, but I wouldn't say it's urgent you go out and get a copy.
    • 1/5
      I still am not sure what the story was about?! I was left very confused. The format of the story was terrible. The letters did not work for this story. The story went off the beaten path way too many times. The only good thing I can say is that the story was short. I would not recommend this to anyone.
    • 2/5
      Good concept and attempt at a retelling of The Turning of the Screw, poor execution. 2.5 rounding up.
    • 4/5
      According to the author, The Turning is a re-do of the Turn of the Screw. I remember liking that book. The Turning is good. It kept my interest. However, it wasn't scary and was somewhat predictable. It just seems there was something missing.Jack takes a summer job on an island inhabited to Linda, the cook/housekeeper, and her two charges Milo and Flora. On the boat ride over, he sees some strange sights that become even stranger in light of incidents that have previously taken place on the island: two lovers died on the lake, a governess and handiman met an ill fate, etc.The book just needed a little more scare factor.
    • 2/5
      The epistolary style doesn't quite work in this story. Jack doesn't make a convincing teenage writer, and there is an awful lot of exposition in his letters to Sophie which would have been just weird in a real letter.

      The complete lack of telecommunications on the island might have been needed as a plot device, but wasn't realistic. And as for the golf clubs...
    • 2/5
      A young man takes a job as a nanny to two young children at their family home on a remove island. He senses that something is not quite right with the house, or with the children. He begins to see shadows and figures on the grounds and in the house, but he is unsure if they're real or if they're all a part of an elaborate plot to drive him insane.This book reminds me of the Turn of the Screw in terms of plot, but little else. I know it's a YA book, but the writing was really bad. It's written in epistolary form, as the main character, Jack, writes letters to his girlfriend back home and, occasionally, his father. It failed, however, to match the dread and fear of the original. The characters fell flat and were simply one-dimensional copies of the original. This was, perhaps, due to the jocular tone of the letters. Jack's tone was one of dismissive nonchalance, half-joking and book-ending the incidents he experienced with unimportant details of his day, and questions about life back home. Perhaps this was Prose's attempt to imitate the voice of a teen boy, but it succeeded, at least for me, in removing the sense of terror and rapidly diminishing sanity that made the original so powerfulIt's hard to rate this book, because it really does read like a Y.A. book, and not a particularly well-written one at that. And the ending...gah...the ending.My advice: if you like The Turning of the Screw, do NOT read this book.
    • 4/5
      Jack's summer job is to hang out with two eerily well-behaved children on an isolated island--no TV, phones, internet, cell service, nothing. Despite his early misgivings about the job (including the seagull screaming at him to turn back on the ferry over), he enjoys it--but there's still something weird. Then he starts seeing the man. And then the red-haired woman from the ferry. And then learns that they're both dead, and the mysteries keep on coming.

      A retelling of The Turn of the Screw (which I haven't read), this has all the flavor of a gothic horror/ghost story, a good choice for the Halloween season. Easy read-alikes are the source material, Shirley Jackson, Long Lankin, and The Shining, as we see Jack uncover more and more of the island's history and his slow personality shift. Would recommend to 8th grade and up looking for something creepy for the gloomy fall nights.
    • 1/5
      Giving up on this audio book. Although the narrator works really hard to put emotion into the story, there's such a lack to begin with that it seems forced. I was bored for over a half hour of listening. Moving on to something new.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautiful and enchanting middle grade book. The prose was lovely and the story was unique. Every time I picked it up to "read just a few pages" I covered 100 instead.

    Book preview

    The Turning - Francine Prose

    DEAR SOPHIE,

    I’m afraid this is going to sound crazy. But a very strange thing just happened.

    A huge seagull had been flying alongside the ferry ever since we left the dock. The seagull was escorting us, or really, escorting me, flying as fast as it had to, in order to stay right beside me, just beyond the railing. If I moved down the deck, it moved.

    The morning was damp and misty, unusually cold for June. There were only a few passengers on deck, and they were wearing rain slickers with hoods that hid their faces and screened out this weird … relationship I was having with this bird.

    It was so close I could have touched it, but I knew I wouldn’t, and the bird knew it, too. I watched it for a few minutes, swooping on the updrafts and circling down again. Then I turned and watched the shoreline disappear, until I could no longer see my dad waving or my dad’s truck. I looked out at the sea, into the chilly wet fog through which I kept trying to glimpse the islands, even though I knew they were too far away.

    It was just at that moment that the bird turned its head and screamed.

    I know: Screaming is what seagulls do. It’s normal.

    This one was screeching right in my ear. Anyone would have jumped—jumped right out of his skin. And yet it wasn’t the noise or the loudness that startled me.

    What made it creepy and scary was that the bird was screaming at me. Not at the boat but at me … it followed me as we moved. How nuts is that?

    Okay, here comes the really crazy part. The screech was almost human. You’re going to have to believe me, Sophie, when I tell you that I could understand what the bird was saying.

    It screamed, Jack! Don’t do this! Turn around! Go home! Leave … leave … leave … Its cry got softer and sadder as the bird veered away and flew off into the distance.

    I told myself, Okay, dude. This is pretty cracked. The seagull is speaking English and calling you by name. You should go belowdecks for a while and chill and be around other people. What makes the whole thing even more confusing is that I’d been feeling okay. Maybe a little nervous—anyone would be—about leaving home for two months to go live on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. But it’s true what we kept telling each other, Sophie: two months isn’t all that long. By August, I’ll have earned at least part of the money I need to go to college. The same college as you. So when high school is over next year, we can both go, assuming we both get in. And somehow I feel sure we will. Two months is a long time to be away from you, but we’ll be together again before the summer is over.

    So I was kind of enjoying the ferry ride, the damp cool of the fog on my face, the salty sting of the sea. I was glad just to have a job, because this summer, as everyone knows, there are no summer jobs. Anywhere. This one was going to pay really well, and it sounded easy, though maybe a little boring. I wasn’t feeling especially paranoid or anxious. So doesn’t it seem strange to you that I imagined a seagull yelling at me to jump off the ferry and swim back to shore?

    Boarding the ferry, I hadn’t paid much attention to the other passengers. I’d been too busy struggling with my luggage. At the very last minute I’d thrown in more sneakers and boots than I’ll probably ever need. My dad and I had wrestled with my duffel bag, and it had been a drama, finding a place to put it on the boat where no one would trip over it and it would be safe.

    By the time we’d stowed it all away, the ferry whistle was blowing and my dad was saying I could still change my mind and come home. He said it made him uncomfortable, my going away to an island where there were no phones or internet or TV, so that we’d have to write letters, old-school, starting with Dear instead of Hi! And ending with love or sincerely instead of X’s and O’s.

    I knew my dad felt guilty, because I had to get a job. The pizza place where I worked last summer went out of business. Lately my dad has hardly been getting any work, though he used to make good money building porches and additions, and renovating the kitchens and bathrooms of rich people’s summer homes. But now, with the economic downturn, a lot of his former customers are deciding they could live with the kitchens and bathrooms they already had. And no one is building new houses, at least not in our town. If I want to go to college, which you know I do, I’m going to have to earn some of the money myself. I think it’s made my dad feel like he failed, even though it’s not his fault that half the country is out of work.

    I told my dad that two months would pass in no time and that my job sounded like fun. There were supposed to be plenty of books in the house where I would be staying, so I could read all kinds of stuff I hadn’t had time for in school. I was bringing my laptop, with this portable printer he’d got me—the old-school kind you plug in to the computer—so I could write him plenty of letters. I could improve my writing skills, which would be helpful in college. I didn’t feel I had to tell him I’d brought along my favorite video games, in case I got sick of reading and writing letters, which I knew I would.

    The ferry whistle blew again. My dad and I hugged good-bye. And as the ship pulled away from the dock, I ran up on deck so he could see me waving. I was sad for a moment, but then the sadness passed, and I started to enjoy the ride. I don’t know why I had that fantasy—or whatever it was—about the seagull.

    I hadn’t slept well the night before. Maybe I was just tired. I decided to go downstairs, which was set up like a big, friendly, warm café. I’d get a coffee with three sugars, chill out, and text you from the phone I’d brought along, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it on the island.

    It turned out I couldn’t text you. The message didn’t go through. We were already too far from land. Really, it doesn’t make sense. You can text from halfway around the world. Probably from the moon. But the minute we sailed toward the islands, we entered a major dead zone. I felt like I’d left the modern world behind and time-traveled back into the past. To tell you the truth, I was starting to feel a little stranded, marooned on the desert (I knew it wasn’t a desert) island I hadn’t even got to. I couldn’t say I wasn’t warned that, as far as modern technology is concerned, I could be spending the summer in the Neanderthal era. I just hadn’t expected to leave the twenty-first century so soon.

    Fortunately, I’d kept my laptop with me instead of packing it away in my duffel bag. I turned on my computer and started writing you this letter. I figured I might as well get a head start, get in practice for the summer. Last night, you kept reminding me that I’d promised to write you every day, though the boat that picks up and delivers the mail to the island comes only three times a week. I said I’d write a letter every night and save them, and send them to you in batches.

    I got so involved in trying to tell you about the seagull that I sort of forgot where I was. When I looked up, an elderly couple was standing beside my table, asking if the empty seats were taken.

    I told you I hadn’t noticed the other passengers. But I’d noticed them, mainly because the guy was blind, and his wife held his arm and was constantly telling him, There’s a step here, turn right, don’t hit your head on the doorway. It was the wife who asked if they could sit with me. I couldn’t exactly say no. The husband’s milky eyes stared straight ahead, didn’t blink, and saw nothing.

    As I shut my laptop, the wife said she hoped they hadn’t interrupted me. I’d seemed so intent on what I was doing. What had I been writing?

    First I said, Oh, nothing. Then I said, A letter to my girlfriend.

    The husband said, "We saw you having quite a time with that seagull up on deck. It would have scared the dickens out of me, a bird screaming at me like that."

    Actually, it made me feel a little less crazy that the guy said he’d seen it. Though I couldn’t help wondering how a blind man could have watched me and the bird having our one-sided conversation.

    They asked me where I was going, and when I said Crackstone’s Landing, the blind man and his wife turned toward each other. Even though he could no longer see, they hadn’t lost the habit of exchanging meaningful glances. It made me wonder what it was about Crackstone’s Landing that had gotten that reaction.

    Are you visiting? asked the woman.

    Not exactly, I said. I’ve got a summer job there. Looking after two kids.

    Odd, said the blind man. Don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t people usually hire girls for jobs like that?

    That’s so old-fashioned and sexist, dear! said his wife. These days plenty of young men babysit and take care of children—

    I said, They had a girl working there before me. But it didn’t work out. She quit suddenly to get married. So they had to find someone quick. And I guess they thought that this time, since it was summer, they should hire a guy to play sports with the kids.

    No immediate wedding plans for you, I assume, the blind man said.

    No, I said.

    What do you know about the children you’re going to take care of? the lady asked me.

    Not much, except what their guardian, Mr. Crackstone, told me, I replied. I guess I could have told them more. I could have said there was no they who had hired me. There was only Jim Crackstone. But Mr. Crackstone was so obviously rich and powerful and intimidating, he seemed like more than one person. He’d seemed like a whole committee.

    I thought about Jim Crackstone’s law office, where I’d gone to meet him, and where he’d tried to put me at ease, but where I was totally not at ease even though he said I’d come highly recommended. I remembered staring at the art on Jim Crackstone’s walls—dozens of antique prints and paintings of exploding volcanoes. I’d wondered: What’s up with that? What’s the message there?

    Jim Crackstone said he’d heard good things about me from his friend Caleb. Also known as Caleb Treadwell, also known as your father, Sophie. I could have told Jim Crackstone that every nice thing your dad said about me must be true, because your dad was hardly in the habit of saying nice things about me. But I wasn’t sure that Mr. Crackstone would appreciate the joke. And I certainly wasn’t going to say that all your dad really wanted was to put me on an island with an ocean between us for two months—two months during which I couldn’t see you, not unless I quit and swam home.

    Talking to the old couple, I remembered all sorts of details about my conversation with my new boss. Jim Crackstone wore a chunky gold ring in the shape of a dollar sign. Normally, I don’t notice guy’s clothes, but his suit, navy with a white pinstripe, was so amazing that I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch it. Mr. Crackstone asked me a few questions about my family. But I could tell he already knew that my mom had died of a stroke when I was six, and I lived with my dad, who never remarried. Not only did Jim Crackstone know all that but I could tell he’d made up his mind to hire me before I walked in the door.

    So I wasn’t all that surprised when he told me he was offering me a two-month job taking care of Flora and Miles, his niece and nephew. The boy was home for the summer from boarding school, to which he would return in the fall. And though they’d hired a full-time replacement teacher for the girl, who was being homeschooled until she was old enough to go away to study, her teacher wouldn’t arrive until the end of August. Since it was the summer, Mr. Crackstone thought he would hire a young man, because of his recent disappointment with the children’s previous teacher, who had left them in the lurch when her fiancé proposed. A young man could supervise the sports and games, the physical activity that the children badly needed, and also Jim Crackstone thought it might be good for Miles to spend some time around a role model—a young man who was a decent human being.

    Something about the way Jim Crackstone’s lip curled when he said decent human being made me think there was something he wasn’t telling me.

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