num_pages: 832
description: The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable writes A. M. Homes. It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming of things taking a turn for the worse. Jacksons charactersmostly unloved daughters in search of a home a career a family of their ownchase what appears to be a harmless dream until without warning it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters dreams for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares and terrified by Jacksons suggestion that there are unseen powersdemons both subconscious and supernaturalmalevolently conspiring against human happiness.In this volume Joyce Carol Oates our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson the novels and stories that from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated postwar America. She opens with The Lottery (1949) Jacksons only collection of short fiction whose disquieting title storyone of the most widely anthologized tales of the twentieth centuryhas entered American folklore. Also among these early works are The Daemon Lover a story Oates praises as deeper more mysterious and more disturbing than The Lottery and Charles the hilarious sketch that launched Jacksons secondary career as a domestic humorist.Here too are Jacksons masterly short novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes and the essay Biography of a Story Jacksons acidly funny account of the public reception of The Lottery which provoked more mail from readers of The New Yorker than any contribution before or since.
language: English
title: Novels & Stories: The Lottery / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle / Other Stories and Sketches
publisher: Library of America