SOURCE: Taylor, D. J. “Beginning with Revelations.” Spectator 272, no. 8658 (18 June 1994): 34.

In the following review, Taylor faults Women and Ghosts, contending that the collection suffers from over-explication and laborious detail rather than employing understatement and subtlety.

What makes a good ghost story? Apart from their scholarly background, which allows antiquarian heroes to delve into matters best left unturned, the classic supernatural tales of M. R. James and Sheridan Le Fanu (whom James acknowledged as an influence) tend to follow a distinctive narrative line. A generally innocuous preamble, often involving the arrival of a stranger in an unfamiliar locale, is followed by a warning: in fact one of James's best stories is called ‘A Warning to the Curious’. This is routinely ignored, whereupon the ghastliness in the wood-shed declares itself, is repulsed, circumvented or otherwise dealt with, and the story rounded off with some kind of explanation. James's stories, in...