Books Blog)
The sun is shining, the skies are clear, Easter eggs are melting on windowsills up and down the land – but I'm going to be shutting myself inside the darker side of life this weekend, after learning that there's a new collection of works by the late Shirley Jackson in the pipeline. The New York Times tells us that the collection, Garlic in Fiction, has been edited by two of her children, and – drawn mostly from Jackson's papers at the Library of Congress - ranges from stories to drawings, lectures and pieces of non-fiction.
According to the acquiring editor at Random House, "these pieces are just as strong as her well-known work". According to her children, they are "gems". "We believe the fiction is important, the lectures are inspiring, and the other writings and drawings show various aspects of her wit and humour," they said in a statement to the NYT.
I can't wait – and I'm hoping against hope there are going to be some nuggets of horror amongst the fiction. I adore Jackson's short stories in The Lottery collection – especially, of course, the disturbing title tale. I won't give away the twist for those who haven't read it, but I'd say The Hunger Games has nothing on this particular lottery. We Have Always Lived in the Castle has the same black-edged tinge, with a brilliantly unreliable narrator – 18-year-old Merricat, who lives with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian – "Everyone else in my family is dead" – ostracised by the local villagers. Constance, you see, has been tried for murdering the rest of the family – she's since been acquitted, but the locals are unimpressed.
And I will evangelise about the brilliance of The Haunting of Hill House to anyone who will listen – it is truly the scariest book I have ever read, and I've read a lot of horror. I defy anyone not be drawn in by the first paragraph:
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood ands tone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
Go on, try it if you haven't, and then come back here and tell me how much you love it.
AM Homes has written of Jackson that her world "is eerie and unforgettable … a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." The Library of America, in a volume of her works, writes that "Jackson's characters – mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own – chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers – 'demons' both subconscious and supernatural – malevolently conspiring against human happiness."
It sounds completely perfect Easter reading, wouldn't you say? I think I'll spend this long weekend in a reread of the Jacksons I own, as well as a tracking-down of those I don't, in anticipation of Garlic in Fiction's release (I love this quote from its editor about one of its pieces, "that she wrote about her favourite kitchen fork. I couldn't believe that a writer could make me as obsessed about a kitchen fork as she is.").
It sounds like it'll be out next year – half a century after Jackson died. The year after, there's a Jackson biography in the works, from Ruth Franklin. I can't wait.
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