Life Among the Savages

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

© Shirley Jackson 1953 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critics Review

  • 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

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