Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

Rather, Shirley Jackson has thrived, at publication and since, as a reader’s writer.”-Jonathan Lethem Sterling in her craft, Jackson is prized by the writers who read her, yet it would be self-congratulatory to claim her as a writer’s writer. She’s both perpetually underrated and persistently mischaracterized as a writer of upscale horror, when in truth a slim minority of her works had any element of the supernatural. “Jackson is one of American fiction’s impossible presences, too material to be called a phantom in literature’s house, too in-print to be ‘rediscovered,’ yet hidden in plain sight. You'll see every parenting stance you've ever adopted, every parent-story trope you've ever told or heard, expressed more perfectly than you ever could have. Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because Jackson refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood * The New York Times *Ĭharming. Never has the state of domestic chaos been so perfectly illuminated * The New York Times Book Review * There is something rather magical about how Jackson managed to so transform suffering into comic masterpieces * Guardian *Īs warm as it is hilarious and believable. Is it ironic or fitting that some of the greatest American writing about that venerated and difficult activity, motherhood, comes from a horror writer?. Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 9780241387801 Number of pages: 240 Weight: 179 g Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 14 mm MEDIA REVIEWS 'Comic masterpieces, laced with hints of the discontent that lies beneath' Guardian Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because she refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood' The New York Times Book Review 'Jackson's family chronicles have a genuinely subversive aspect.

In Life Among the Savages, her caustically funny account of raising her children in a ramshackle house in Vermont, she deals with rats in the cellar, misbehaving imaginary friends, an oblivious husband and ever-encroaching domestic chaos, all described with wit, warmth and plenty of bite.

'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children'Īs well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley Jackson was also a pitch-perfect chronicler of everyday family life. A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson