Life Among the Savages
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:1st Aug '19
Should be back in stock very soon
From the queen of domestic horror, this is a masterpiece of domestic comedy.
A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery
'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children'
As well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley Jackson was also a pitch-perfect chronicler of everyday family life. In Life Among the Savages, her caustically funny account of raising her children in a ramshackle house in Vermont, she deals with rats in the cellar, misbehaving imaginary friends, an oblivious husband and ever-encroaching domestic chaos, all described with wit, warmth and plenty of bite.
'Jackson's family chronicles have a genuinely subversive aspect ... Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because she refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood' The New York Times Book Review
'Comic masterpieces, laced with hints of the discontent that lies beneath' Guardian
Is it ironic or fitting that some of the greatest American writing about that venerated and difficult activity, motherhood, comes from a horror writer? ... There is something rather magical about how Jackson managed to so transform suffering into comic masterpieces * Guardian *
As warm as it is hilarious and believable ... Never has the state of domestic chaos been so perfectly illuminated * The New York Times Book Review *
Warm and funny ... Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because Jackson refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood * The New York Times *
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 ... One of the great memoirists of family life * Slate *
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
ISBN: 9780241387801
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 14mm
Weight: 179g
240 pages