There is no writer quite like Shirley Jackson. Reading Shirley Jackson is a lot like doing a very hard job that you enjoy doing. The emotions she inspires in the reader, or at least this reader, are hard to classify. I don't think there is any doubt that it is a depressing experience, but yet it is also an enjoyable one (in the sense that a person can, to some extent, enjoy being depressed). I feel closer to Shirley Jackson when I read her writing than I do to any other writer I have read. It is hard to explain, but the reader really "connects" with Jackson and shares her innermost feelings. The experience, for me, is stronger in We Have Always Lived in the Castle and in "The Daemon Lover" than it is in the more famous The Haunting of Hill House and "The Lottery."
The best of Jackson's short stories, including both "The Lottery" and "The Daemon Lover"
Come Along With Me is Jackson's unfinished final novel. Along with this
and some other short stories are three lectures, including "Notes for a Young
Writer"
For my money, Jackson's most disturbing work.
Get your own Free Home Page