Life Among the SavagesLife Among the Savages
Title rated 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 51 ratings(51 ratings)
Book, 1997
Current format, Book, 1997, , No Longer Available.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. Fans of Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Cheaper by the Dozen, and anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote will find much to recognize in Shirley Jackson's home and neighborhood: 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, capable husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day.
The author offers a humorous account of her experiences as she, her husband, and their four young children moved from an apartment in the city to a big house 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." Jackson's literary talents are in evidence everywhere, as is her trenchant, unsentimental wit. Yet there is no mistaking the happiness and love in these pages, which are crowded with the raucous voices of an extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.
Continuously in print since 1948, Jackson's Haunting of Hill House has been bought by Dreamworks.
The author offers a humorous account of her experiences as she, her husband, and their four young children moved from an apartment in the city to a big house in rural Vermont
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- New York, N.Y. : Penguin Books, 1997.
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