Hardcover, 292 pages
English language
Published 2000 by The Modern Library, Modern Library, Brand: Modern Library.
A haunting and powerful collection of stories from one of America's finest writers, with a new Introduction by Patrick McGrath.
Eerie, unforgettable, and by turns terrifying and hilarious, Shirley Jackson's collection of stories plunges us into a unique, brilliantly etched world where the uncanny lurks in the everyday and where nothing is quite what it seems. In "The Lottery," Jackson's most famous work and one of the greatest--and scariest--stories of the twentieth century, a small town gathers for an annual ritual that culminates in a terrible event. In "The Daemon Lover," a woman waits, then searches, for the man she is to marry that day, only to find that he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed. In "Trial by Combat," a shy woman confronts her kleptomaniac neighbor, and in "Pillar of Salt," a tourist in New York is gradually paralyzed by a city grown nightmarish. Throughout …
A haunting and powerful collection of stories from one of America's finest writers, with a new Introduction by Patrick McGrath.
Eerie, unforgettable, and by turns terrifying and hilarious, Shirley Jackson's collection of stories plunges us into a unique, brilliantly etched world where the uncanny lurks in the everyday and where nothing is quite what it seems. In "The Lottery," Jackson's most famous work and one of the greatest--and scariest--stories of the twentieth century, a small town gathers for an annual ritual that culminates in a terrible event. In "The Daemon Lover," a woman waits, then searches, for the man she is to marry that day, only to find that he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed. In "Trial by Combat," a shy woman confronts her kleptomaniac neighbor, and in "Pillar of Salt," a tourist in New York is gradually paralyzed by a city grown nightmarish. Throughout these twenty-five tales, we move through a variety of emotional landscapes full of loneliness and humor, oddity and cruelty, banality and terror, and searing psychological insight. No reader will come away unaffected.
The only collection to appear during Jackson's lifetime, The Lottery and Other Stories reveals the full breadth and power of this truly original writer. (jacket)
I only read the story the title story The lottery which was recommended to me by someone I can't remember who recently, and I'm sorry it just didn't catch my fancy cuz as a form of population control it's not exactly my cup of tea.
From what I gathered from this, Shirley Jackson is very much focussed on the perceived "normal" and it's concequences, often highlighting the oddity of social rules once they are challenged. The stories are a bit hit or miss for me, probably based on what I can relate to and what I can't. At the same time, the mundane nature of most of the stories did in places feel quite dull to me. As a collection of stories this work quite effectively creates a sense of hightend uneasyness, almost anxiety. With every new story I found myself more and more wary of the worlds they are set in. In that regard, having The Lottery be the final story of the whole is quite genius, spelling out directly what the other stories generally only hint at.
At the end I am torn, I don't know if I am bored or fascinated.
