Shirley Jackson is one of my Adored Authors. She was a fascinating writer and was an even more fascinating person.
Her short stories and novels are uncanny and unsettling, while also being dryly humorous. Her domestic, humorous stories are completely delightful as well and give no indication of her being anything more than an ordinary, frazzled housewife--certainly not the well-regarded writer that she was.
This book about her life tells her story vividly. She was incredibly complex psychologically, and lived her life to the fullest in some ways (drinking, smoking, socializing, eating) and not to others (borderline agoraphobia). Plus, her relationships with her husband and her children--fascinating. I loved reading about her life as an author, particularly the response to The Lottery when it was printed in the New Yorker. To this day, it generated more mail than any other story before or since (at least in 1988 it did).
I loved these quotes that, for me, sum up why Jackson's work is so compelling to me:
"It was Shirley's genius to be able to paint homey, familiar scenes like this, and then imbue them with evil--or, more correctly, allow a reader to see the evil that had been obvious to her all along, even in sunny Burlingame. One felt the presence of a grinning skull behind the cover of surface gentility, homemade biscuits, shining floors, and this is what made the tales to disturbing. Shirley never had to search for exotic locales or strange characters. You see, her stories seemed to nudge lightly, insistently at the reader, it was right here, right in front of you all the time." (p. 101)And:
"That feeling Shirley could give readers--that the earth had suddenly slipped out from under them--worked just as well for hilarity as for terror, it turned out.) (p. 120)
"King [Stephen, of course], in fact, dedicated one of his books, Firestarter, 'to Shirley Jackson, who never had to raise her voice.'"
Beautifully said, Steve!