Well, who couldn't love this collection? There may be some who, knowing "The Lottery" and Ms. Jackson's reputation for that classic tale and a handful of other "weird stories", and with no thanks to the packaging ("a literary sorceress" proclaims the back, "the most haunting writer of our time" p...
When I first finished this novel, I was left with the feeling of, what the heck just happened? This was a combination of reading the last fifth or so, where the story takes an interesting turn, during a fit of insomnia, which helped contribute to the sense that the story had gone off the rails. H...
Having loved, “The Haunting of Hill House,” and “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” I was looking forward to reading more by Shirley Jackson. Published in 1954, this is Jackson’s third novel and already has several themes which recur in later books. The main character, Elizabeth Richmond, is...
Aunt Fanny knows when the world will end....Aunt Fanny has always been somewhat peculiar. No one is surprised that while the Halloran clan gathers at the crumbling old mansion for a funeral she wanders off to the secret garden. But when she reports the vision she had there, the family is engulfed...
Everyone knew the residents of Pepper Street were "nice" people -- especially the residents themselves. Among the self-satisfied group were: Mrs Merriam, the sanctimonious shrew who was turning her husband into a nonentity and her daughter into a bigoted spinster; Mr Roberts, who found relief fro...
Shirley Jackson, author of the classic short story The Lottery, was known for her terse, haunting prose. But the writer possessed another side, one which is delightfully exposed in this hilariously charming memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont. Fans of Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Cheape...
“It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house ; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.I should have turned back at the gate.”Welcome to Hill House! Enjoy your stay...
This is collection of shorts stories and essays by Shirley Jackson, compiled by her husband, is a dark gem. I've read most of her other collection, The Lottery and Other Stories, but in my opinion this volume is more penetrating. (Vague spoiler ahead) There is a story in this book called The Rock...
When we bought the house, my husband and I both assumed, upon the candid statement of the real estate agent, that the only thing defective on the property was the left-hand gatepost leaning off at a rakish angle. The roof, the furnace, the wiring, the plumbing, the foundations—all of these, we be...
The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the w...
GARDEN WAS SITTING in the overstuffed chair in her furnished room, smoking. She was a young woman, not more than twenty-three or four. She was small and thin and she was wearing a light blue corduroy housecoat and had her hair in curlers. It was eleven in the morning. She was finishing her third ...
I can’t remember what we talked about, but I do know we could hear each other. That was back in the time, too, when we had all sorts of ideas about bringing up children. We supposed that our children were not going to be messy all the time like other children we saw, and if we had a daughter, we ...
There had originally been a key for each of us; our father had a key, and our mother, and the keys were kept on a rack beside the kitchen door. When Charles started out for the village Constance gave him a key, perhaps our father’s key, and a shopping list, and the money to pay for what he bought...
