Life Among the Savages - Hardcover

Shirley Jackson

3.98

8,172 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089190624X ISBN 13: 9780891906247

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Young, 2011

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One of America's most celebrated writers takes you home to a family and a small town so funny and unpredictable, you'd wish it were your own. "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.

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Review:

Can this be the author of such chilling tales as The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House? An ordinary housewife stuck in a big, shabby house with three marvelous, demanding children and a charming husband who takes detached interest in the chaos they generate? Yes, it's Shirley Jackson all right: the precision of her observations and prose is familiar, even if her humor is something of a surprise. Not until Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions in 1993 would another woman write with such honesty about the maddening multitude of trivial, essential chores that constitute a mother's life. But Jackson nailed it first, 40 years earlier, in her hilarious chronicle of life in a small Vermont town, where getting the kids to school on time requires the combined gifts of a drill sergeant and a lady's maid. The saga of her son's bumpy adjustment to kindergarten, frequently anthologized as Charles, is justly famous, but Jackson's account of the Department Store Trip from Hell (two kids, two toy guns, one doll carriage and doll, mayhem in revolving doors and escalators) is even funnier. Although her memoirs are as merciless as her ghost stories, you may not notice because you're laughing so hard. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) first rose to fame with her short story 'The Lottery.' Her six novels and many short stories confirmed her as an essential voice in twentieth century American fiction.

Lesa Lockford is a professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University. She teaches courses in voice for the actor, dialects, acting, and performance studies. She is also a writer and performer. Before becoming a teacher, she was a professional actor in Great Britain where she appeared in a variety of roles in television, film, and on the stage. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

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