Quiet Company

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Even as a lifelong fan of speculative fiction, some of the most effective horror is that where a reader is kept guessing.  One of the acknowledged masters of this is Henry James, whose The Turn of the Screw is considered a classic.  There are perhaps too many writers active today to predict who will be considered authors of classics a century or two down the road—writing has to take a long view.  Nevertheless Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions is, in this reader’s opinion, quite effective.  And ambiguous.  I’m on the constant lookout for gothic novels that work and this is one that surely does.  I’ll try not to give spoilers here, but I do recommend it for those who want a gothic atmosphere.  It is also genuinely scary.  A great deal of this is because the reader is never quite sure what has happened.

The eponymous companions are decorative curios purchased to impress royal visitors in the seventeenth century.  Life-like cutouts of people, they are silent.  Throw in an old, sprawling house in need of repair and a widow who had abusive parents and who’s inherited resentful servants and you’ve got a recipe for an eerie atmosphere.  The novel splits its time between the nineteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on the former.  Elsie Bainbridge is a protagonist with many secrets, and not a few skeletons in her closet.  The house she inherited also has a past that included accusations of witchcraft and cruel masters interested in self-promotion.  Told from the point-of-view of the women in a patriarchal society, there is an authenticity to the victimhood even of strong women.

It would be difficult to tell too much of the plot without giving away some of the creepier moments.  There’s a lot going on here and although it’s not a short book it doesn’t drag the reader down with filling too many gaps.  It’s also a novel that allows imagination to outstrip rationality.  Good speculative fiction will do that.  Even some of Poe’s work makes the reader wonder just what is happening—is this in the mind of the observer or is it objectively real?  Think “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Literature takes us into such places and gothic literature does so with more shadows and ambiguity.  Throw in some betrayals, and keep a few well-placed secrets and the recipe is in place for a creepy novel that will keep you reading.

Another Turn

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I have read The Turn of the Screw before.  Henry James’ most famous ghost story is a classic of ambiguity.  My previous reading, maybe a decade ago, was in an edition of James that insisted on stuffing other stories into the same binding, most of which I’ll probably never read.  I located a reasonably priced edition containing only the novella I wanted and it is published by Heathen Editions.  Obviously priding themselves on the unorthodox, Heathen Editions provides books with some little commentary, particularly pointing out unfamiliar words or explaining circumstances that many modern readers lack the training to spot.  The edition ends with James’ own afterword to the story, something my larger James volume lacks.  The story I remembered in part, but the notes also engaged me.

These notes aren’t numerous and they don’t distract.  In my case I understood the words defined, but I appreciated some of the historical or literary context supplied.  With so much literature available these days modern readers have to be drawn back into the classics.  James’ style tends toward the choice of more words than would be strictly necessary to tell the tale.  The fact that it was serialized helps to explain that.  Like Middlemarch and The Woman in White, both of which I’ve posted on in the past, being serialized encourages a kind of verbosity that modern publishers of fiction eschew.  At least in my limited experience.  For The Turn of the Screw the slow building to the climax requires spreading out.  The story itself could be summarized in a paragraph (which I won’t do, because you should read it yourself), but the feeling of dread has to grow as bits are slowly revealed.

One of the notes particularly caught my attention.  In an oblique reference to David and Saul, the editor expanded the footnote a bit.  The scene is when Saul is being tormented by an evil spirit sent by God and David is called in to help him with a kind of music therapy.  David plays his lyre and Saul’s demons temporarily leave him.  This is subtly referenced in chapter 18 of the Heathen Edition.  The note briefly explains Saul and David and then, for the only time in the book, goes on to provide a reception history of the reference by informing the reader that Leonard Cohen also refers to this episode in his song “Hallelujah.”  I’m sure the opening lines are familiar enough that I don’t need to risk violating copyright to quote them.  So it was that while reading a ghost story the Bible was introduced, which, of course has been my research agenda for a few years now.  A turn of the screw indeed.