There’s more than one collection titled “The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.” The one I read has nine stories in it. Together, they covered quite a range of emotions, from sadness to anger to horror to sweet sentimentality, and also a range of settings from the Middle East to Italy to rural New England. All of them share Wharton’s elegant, urbane writing style. 

Wharton’s refined and restrained writing made it hard to get caught up in the book. The stories were easy to read, but whenever I finished one I’d get distracted and forget about the book for a few days before starting the next. I kept coming back, though. There’s something calm and beautiful about her style that really started to grow on me.

Some of the stories–“The Fullness of Life,” “A Journey,” and “The Looking-Glass”–weren’t so much ghost stories as stories about death. These were my least favorite, well written but a bit conventional and sentimental. One–“A Bottle of Perrier”–was more of a mystery and quite good. The other five were actually ghost stories, all very different from each other and all quite good. 

There are a few violent moments in these stories, but Wharton doesn’t dwell on them. Her focus is on emotion and haunting atmosphere. These are the kind of stories you curl up with on a cold night, when you want a little spooky thrill or a thoughtful look at life and death. From what I can tell, Wharton has many more ghost stories, so I might well be curling up with those very soon. 

3 haunted stars. Neither gothic nor horrific, but elegant and haunting.