Life Among The Savages
Back Cover Text:author of The Haunting of Hill House
"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
One of America's most celebrated writers takes you home to a family and a small town so funny and unpredictable, you'll wish it were your own.
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.
"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."
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 husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day - these pages are blissfully crowded with the raucous and endearing voices of Jackson's extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.
"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