Life Among the Savages - Hardcover

Jackson, Shirley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089190624X ISBN 13: 9780891906247

Publisher: Amereon Ltd, 1953

Synopsis

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, Cheaper by the Dozen, and anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote will find much to recognize in Shirley Jackson's home and neighborhood: children who won't behave, cars that won't start, furnaces that break down, a pugnacious corner bully, household help that never stays, and a patient, capable husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day.

"Our house," writes Jackson, "is old, noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books." Jackson's literary talents are in evidence everywhere, as is her trenchant, unsentimental wit. Yet there is no mistaking the happiness and love in these pages, which are crowded with the raucous voices of an extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.

Continuously in print since 1948, Jackson's Haunting of Hill House has been bought by Dreamworks.

About this title

Review

Read today, [Shirley Jackson s] pieces feel surprisingly modern mainly because Jackson refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood . [Jackson s] household stories take advantage of the same techniques she developed as a fiction writer: the gradual buildup of carefully chosen detail, the ironic understatement, the repetition of key phrases and the unerring instinct for just where to begin and end a story.
-Ruth Franklin, New York Times Book Review
"Charming 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 Reading Shirley Jackson, one of the great memoirists of family life, makes sharp those feelings once more while reminding us that, yes, thank god and curse time, we too will one day look back on them across a gulf of years.
-Dan Kois, Slate
"Many who profess an admiration for Shirley Jackson, often described as a 'writer's writer' do not usually include her thinly veiled memoirs of motherhood. But it is precisely these hilariously eviscerating, keenly observed, and genersou books that I and many other writers who happen to be mothers, adore.
-Ayelet Waldman
"As warm as it is hilarious and believable...Never has the state of domestic chaos been so perfectly illuminated."
New York Times Book Review
"When it comes to just sheer honest, wry, frustrated, finding-ways-to-appreciate-it writing about family life, we all sit at Shirley Jackson s feet"
-New York Times Motherlode
"Very funny Life Among the SavagesandRaising Demonsare each a good place to begin for those who have never read any Shirley Jackson.
-The New Republic
"Jackson artfully loves and portrays her children. She writes of their fast growth into formidable personalities with dismayed narration and lovely direct quotes, all charmingly subjective. Her view of their sayings and doings is certainly sophisticated but far from cynical or objective."
Saturday Review
"A housewife-mother s frustrations are transformed by a deft twist of the wrist into, not a grim account of disintegration and madness, still less the poisoning of her family, but light-hearted comedy."
Joyce Carol Oates
"Jackson isn t all eerie uncertainties and lonely housewives. Those who know her work only from 'The Lottery' or Hill House may be surprised to discover that she could also be very funny...Jackson s two lighthearted memoirs, are filled with droll observations and amusing mishaps."
William Brennan, Slate"

Synopsis

The author offers a humorous account of her experiences as she, her husband, and their four young children moved from an apartment in the city to a big house in rural Vermont.

Edition details

• Publisher: Amereon Ltd
• Publication date: 1953
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 089190624X
• ISBN 13: 9780891906247
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1