Discussions of murder should take place on gray days or in the night. In Hollman, in the spring, Gregor felt as though he were playing a movie scene on the wrong set. It was as if John Sayles had decided to make a movie of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” in the bright greens and very early sixties Happy Days spotlessness of Matinee. “What are you thinking about?” Kyle Borden asked as he pulled the town’s one police car into a parking place on Grandview Avenue. They were parked right in front of a largish store whose purpose he couldn’t decipher—hardware, maybe, or home furnishings. Just across from them, there was a side street split around a small triangular island. On the far side of that from where they were, in a place where the sidewalk curved in a great sweep up the hill, was Hollman’s Pizza, where they were headed. “I was thinking about ‘The Lottery,’” Gregor said. “The Pennsylvania lottery?” “No. There’s a short story, by—” “Shirley Jackson,”
What do You think about Somebody Else's Music (2011)?
