I don't recall where I saw this book advertised online, but I didn't realize it was categorized as a young adult novel until I was asking for it at the bookstore. The blurb I'd read made it sound creepy and the cover looks somewhat creepy in a Harry Potteresque kind of way, so I bought it. I haven't read any fiction by Francine Prose, but I enjoy her book, Reading Like a Writer. And it is October, time for creepy reads.

The Turning tells the story of Jack, a teen who accepts a summer job living on an isolated island taking care of two kids, Miles and Flora. Jack got the job through his girlfriend's father, a father who supposedly wants Jack away from his daughter. Jack needs to raise money to attend the same college as his girlfriend. Miles and Flora were orphaned when their parents were killed in a train crash in India and are now provided for by their rich uncle who wants nothing to do with them. There's a cook, Linda, who lives year round with the kids who has become a stand-in mother. Linda's husband died on the island. Other people have died on the island as well. There's lots of rumors about bad happenings on the island and in the house. Is the house haunted? What's up with all the significant glances between Miles and Flora? Is Jack seeing people or ghosts? Is his girlfriend cheating on him with her ex? Jack's mind starts to spin.

The story is told through letters written mainly by Jack to his girlfriend and a few to his father. There are some return letters to Jack from the girlfriend and father. This framework doesn't work very convincingly. Epistolary novels are hard to pull off and while Jack sounds like a teenager some of the time, I just don't buy that these are letters he's written--they're much too safe, consistent, and prosy to have been written by a living person, let alone a teen adventurous enough to accept such a job.

And the letters from the girlfriend and father are so obviously designed to move the plot along. Here's an example from the father:

Dear Jack,
I'm glad to hear you're doing so well and have adjusted to the island and that you're even having fun. It's hard to believe that three weeks have passed since you left. Sometimes it seems like five minutes, and sometimes like five months. I miss you--even the loud music and the video games and all the stuff I used to complain about.
You know, Jack, something happened yesterday at work. I can't remember if I told you I got a couple of weeks of cabinet work in a house that this doctor from Boston is renovating. My friend Russ is doing the painting. I hadn't seen Russ for a while, and he asked how you were. I told him about your job on the island. . . . He got a strange look on his face and said he remembered reading about something strange that happened there, something nasty. Or maybe it was something that happened to some people from there. He thought maybe even a murder or a double murder. . . . I had to quit working for a minute and take a deep breath.
Russ always gets things wrong. He probably meant some other island completely. I figured you'd have heard about it now, if there was anything . . . which I'm sure there isn't.
Anyhow, keep having fun. Say hello to the kids for me, even though I've never met them. Likewise Linda. I'm sure I'd like her as much as you say I would.
Love,
Your dad (132-133)

Really? What dad would write something like that?

Leaving the epistolary problems behind, the book is simply flat. It has some curves and turns that seem promising that never develop into anything substantial. And it's also not very creepy, at least not for a young adult novel. I actually thought it read more like a book for middle schoolers. Then again, creepy reading when I was a teen was Stephen King, so perhaps I'm just skewed.

I'd recommend The Turning to middle schoolers and young teens who haven't read much creepy stuff. If they like this, there's certainly more out there to keep them reading. Speaking of which, I'm told The Turning is a retelling of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which I thought I had read, but apparently have not, so I've added it to my own TBR list. ( )

3.25*
Maybe this is just what I needed right now, but I liked this book a little more than I thought I would - especially after reading a few reviews about it. I agree with a few of the reviews I read that the way this way written doesn't make sense. A high school student writing letters to their dad and girlfriend explaining events happening on a remote island where no technology is allowed in today's society didn't really work for this story line for several different reasons.

First, this kid smuggles his video games and his laptop there so he can write letters ... how was he printing these off though? Or was he actually hand writing them? I didn't quite understand that part of it. But needless to say, there were certain things he would bring up in his letters that the people reading would already know and so wouldn't need to be stated in a letter to them. These moments were clearly for the reader to learn things about the other characters, but it didn't work. Secondly, I work with high school students all day and no high schooler would use the kind of vocabulary or descriptive words/phrases that Jack did in this novel. I really had to suspend my belief for that (along with a couple other things). I think this would have worked just as well told in the first person without the letter format.

I did, however, enjoy the story line and wanted to know how things were going to end. I wish some parts had been a little better developed and/or explained. For example, Jack talks about people wearing really old fashioned (or overly dressed) people in the story including the children he is going to be watching - but this is never explained or explored more than Jack stating his observations about the children. I felt like something was supposed to come from this, but it turned out that it was just supposed to add to the mystery and strangeness of the children. The entire strangeness of the children could have been much better developed and built upon to increase the creepiness of the book, but nothing more than observations were made. I will say, this would be a good gateway book for a middle grade/high school student to read; it would be a good way to see if they enjoy suspense/mystery books. ( )

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. ( )

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... ( )

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. ( )