The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

I didn't know that The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a book before it was a movie.  I've seen the movie numerous times and have a DVD of lost in the house somewhere. (Last time I watched it, I paid $2.99 to Amazon Prime-- my excuse was I was in Chicago and didn't have access to the DVD here)  It's probably pretty obvious I am very fond of the movie.

It was only by chance that I found out about the  book when it was one of the specials of the day on Bookbub. I think it was $1.99 for the Kindle edition so how could I resist.  My remembrance of the cover was something blue, but then most times I saw it was tiny on my the Kindle app on my phone.  When I went back and really looked at it,  I saw that there was more than blue.  The blue was meant to be the sky and ocean.  It's a darkish blue that makes it seem like nighttime.  There's a coastline  is in silhouette and a barely visible house. Along with the title there is banner with Vintage Movie Classics and below it in tiny print Novels That Inspired Great Films.  The author is listed as R. A. Dick which seems rather androgynous.  It turns out the author is a woman and her real name is Josephine Aimee Campbell Leslie.  Maybe she chose the pseudonym because her real name wouldn't fit on the cover.

The book is quite short and since the type that says novels that inspired great movies is very small and unreadable when the cover is thumbnail size, I thought at first that the book was written after the movie and was just a fleshed out screenplay.

It almost could have been.  The book was very like the movie with a little more background. I was fascinated by the style it was written  in-- So much of it was narrative.  I heard over and over in writing classes that I took that you were supposed to show not tell.  That meant lots of dialogue and writing scenes.  One of the reasons the book is so short is that so much is told by the narrator.  

It's funny how taste changes, or we coerced into changing our taste. Whatever is current is considered correct as in what I was told in the writing classes.  I guess telling was the correct manner in the late 1940s when the book was written.

I always think of how our, well my, perception of color combinations has been changed by outside forces.  As a kid, I remember thinking pink and red together was horrible, and then cranberry and pink became an in style look in the 60s. My other favorite change of heart was dark blue and black.  They were considered a bad combination and then suddenly it became fashionable and I liked the look of dark washed jeans and a black top.  The idea of a T-shirt with a suit would have been laughable until we were trained it was fashionable.

I always thought it was a given that you didn't mix clothes with different patterns.  I'm seeing more of that now.  It's going to be a long fight before that looks good to me.

But back to writing style in books.  It seems to be that it shouldn't interfere with the story.  You shouldn't have to reread sentences a bunch of times to figure out what they mean.   I guess my point is that the writing style shouldn't get in the way of the story.  It's what I try to do.  

And The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was an enjoyable read.