a very funny novel actually, a compilation of interlinked stories about a mommy, a daddy, and a powerhousefull of children and assorted pets who give up Manhattan's crowded postWorld War II real estate market for the dubious comforts of life in snowy Vermont.
The author is Shirley Jackson, usually associated with macabre stories and novels like "The Lottery" and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES is presented as fiction, but many of the incidents in this book seem to have been lifted out of real life in rural Vermont, with her four kids and husband, critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.
There's a good chance that when the narrator says things like "I was in bed with a mystery" she meant one she was writing, not reading.
And the allfemale college hubby teaches at just happens to be Bennington,
But with Shirley Jackson at the wheel, there's usually a shiv or a shiver underneath the domestic goingson, One housekeeper frosts her cookies with "Repent, Sinner" another borrows a few bucks and flees town with her felon boyfriend, Another story has the kids all excited about their next visit to "Pudge" over the hill, where the children live beneath the water of the pond and an afternoon visit might take years.
. .
Sadly, due to multiple addictions to liquor, smoking, pills and even chocolate obesity, not to mention likely overwork, the real Shirley Jackson did not live to see fifty.
How fortunate we are to have not only her scary work but this supremely funny book and its sequel, sitelinkRaising Demons,
I don't know what I had expected of Shirley Jackson's domestic memoir, Heartfelt authenticity, sure. A characteristic tone that is sensible instead of sentimental, of course, But it wasn't such endearing humour, I do wish it was longer even though the vignettes are about the mundane aspects of daily life albeit with serious moments that shed light on her family's financial struggles, Shirley presents them in such a gripping, charming way.
Shirley Jackson and her husband had four kids, Apparently her deep understanding of the human psyche extends just as well into humor as it does into horror, I first read this inth orth grade, and have probable read it four times in all, I just knew I was going to have children like hers,
I did. Not in the class of Erma Bombeck, not even Peg Bracken, Jackson intends to evoke humor from her family as they grow up in the New England hinterlands but this isn't her forte, She hits the right note on only a few situations, such as the last moments of her second pregnancy, Otherwise, I winced more than smiled, I've read Shirley Jackson at the peak of her form: sitelinkWe Have Always Lived in the Castle,
I've read Shirley Jackson at her scariest: sitelinkThe Haunting of Hill House,
I've read Shirley Jackson at her most psychologically incisive: sitelinkThe Bird's Nest,
Now I've read Shirley Jackson at her funniest, sitelinkLife Among the Savages is a charming memoir of the author's domestic life, As the title implies, she is the only civilized being in the midst of an everincreasing number of children and a husband whowell, he is a grown man, which is the equivalent of an ungrown man.
Here we see the author in her everyday life, a wrangler of children and household chores, There really is nothing at all remarkable about what goes on in these pages the charm and the interest lies in the telling, Jackson possesses a dry wit that she doses out in plenty,
This book is episodic rather than continuous, There's an episode in which a trip to the bank leads to the children sitting on Santa's lap, which leads to Santa promising all sorts of presents to the children which the author cannot afford ten points if you can guess who was dressed up as Santa.
Then there's another in which the eldest boy returns home from school everyday to report the exploits of a very illbehaved boy in his class, Imagine the author's surprise when she attends a parentteacher conference and discovers the true identity of the ne'erdowell, . .
There's a lot about this book that feels like a really great television sitcom, Analogywise, consider this Shirley Jackson:her children::Liz Lemon:the employees of TGS i, e.Rock. This book is imminently translatable to the small screen and I beg someone to do it, For me, please.,
Our house is old, and noisy, and full, When we moved into it we had two children and aboutbooks I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhapschildren and easily half a million books.
“Life Among the Savages” comprova que quem sai aos seus não degenera, e se Shirley Jackson é conhecida pela sua imaginação prodigiosa, os filhos não lhe ficam atrás, com a agravante de a aplicarem não à literatura ficcionada mas ao diaadia.
Os Jackson são, basicamente, uma família muito doida, onde não faltam
um cão, gatos e todo o tipo de empregadas temporárias.
Quando o contrato de arrendamento de Shirley Jackson termina, ela mudase para uma enorme e velha casa no Vermont, com o marido e os dois filhos, Laurie e Jennie, duas crianças traquinas e expansivas.
Algum tempo depois, nasce Sally, que segue as pisadas dos irmãos a fazer a cabeça da mãe em água, e o livro termina com Shirley a chegar da maternidade com Barry, que eu nem quero imaginar que tipo de selvagem virá a ser.
Talvez descubra um dia na sequela, “Raising Demons”,
I cannot think of a preferable way of life, except one without children and without books, going on soundlessly in an apartment hotel where they do the cleaning for you and send up your meals and all you have to do is lie on a couch andas I say, I cannot think of a preferable way of life, but then I have had to make a good many compromises, all told.
Quem tem amigos ou parentes com filhos, e eu contra mim falo, já foi decerto brindado com as intermináveis gracinhas e os ditos precoces dos seus rebentos que, no fundo, só interessam aos pais babados.
“Life Among the Savages” vive bastante desses momentos, quando o que eu queria era mais a perspectiva da mãe, geralmente paciente e condescendente, mas também compreensivelmente a perder as estribeiras.
São inúmeros os episódios de tropelias e insolências que a autora aqui conta, que tornam a narrativa ligeiramente irritante e inverosímil, quando, na verdade, foi Shirley Jackson como mãe, mulher e donadecasa que fez as minhas delícias.
Sentimental people keep insisting that women go on to have a third baby because they love babies, and cynical people seem to maintain that a woman with two healthy, active children around the house will do anything for ten quiet days in the hospital my own position is somewhere between the two, but I acknowledge that it leans toward the latter.
Quem não soubesse que ela era escritora, por esta obra nunca o descobriria, pois, exceptuando uma ocasião em que tem de revelar a sua profissão, não há uma única referência ao ato de escrita nem um queixume à falta de tempo ou espaço para exercer o seu ofício, dedicandose antes a tarefas como cuidar da casa, fazer bolos, remendar e até bordar, sempre com os três filhos como ruído de fundo.
I spent more time with Sally than with anyone else, and began to find that a large part of my daily activity was accompanied by Sallys tuneful and unceasing conversation part song, part story, part uncomplimentary editorial comment.
“I discovered that my former usual attitude of timid acquiescence was not consistent with someone who could drive a car, so I fell gradually into a new personality, swashbuckling and brazen, with a cigarette usually hanging out of one corner of my mouth because I had to keep both hands on the wheel.
”
Given her fiction, its not surprising that there were many sides to Shirley Jackson, This book, about moving from New York and raising her children in Vermont, tells of her mommy side, I found it shocking to think she was a doting mother and docile housewife while writing sitelinkThe Lottery, sitelinkThe Road Through the Wall, and sitelinkHangsaman.
But she was, and you see bits of where she got her ideas in this memoir, For example, since I recently read sitelinkThe Sundial, this jumped out at me, about taking her daughter to a birthday party and being intimidated by the house:
“We were driving past terraced lawns, rich with ornamental trees and graveled walks I saw a sundial and what may have been a swimming pool.
Above us, on top of the hill, the house looked like someones dream of a country club, with picture windows and fieldstone and gabled roofs, ”
This book shows domestic life through Shirleys unique viewpoint, and its an eyeopening window into the times, Written in, you can see the postwar obsession with money and concern about what the neighbors might think, Some other little details that might shock younger readers:
Making pudding from a box for the familys dessert brought a sense of accomplishment
People smoked in hospitalsincluding abouttodeliver mothers
Women couldnt escape the label of housewife, no matter how individually successful they were
You could go to the bank and just ask for money when you needed it but this is why what the neighbors think of you was important
Mostly, I thought of my mom while reading.
I would never have thought of comparing her with Shirley Jackson except for the fact they both believed in ghosts, but they definitely shared some things on the domestic side.
Like Shirley, my mom didnt care much about what other people thought, but the times required her to act as if she did, My mom and Shirley were expected to be domestic goddesses, even if their real interests were their work and reading all those booksthe ones that lined the walls in our house as they did in Shirleys.
And I got the feeling Shirley got a kick out of her children in the same way my mom did,
I just wish, instead of that set of Erma Bombeck books I gave my mom long ago that she never read, I would have given her this book.
She would have loved it, A fun fact about this book is that it is the funniest, the most interesting, the uniqueest, and the most underrated book of all time,
If I need to dedicate my life to forming various legitimateseeming committees and subcommittees and awards ceremonies and aliases in order to convince people of that fact, so be it.
I am willing to make screaming from the rooftops on the subject of this my sole purpose,
This is just the best, I slumped so hard after reading it because I couldn't imagine finding any book that brought me the joy that this brought me and then I remembered that there's a sequel, and I promptly bought it both in paperback and as an ebook and then I remembered that Shirley Jackson, in a truly nonsensical and evil act, is no longer with us, and therefore once I read the sequel I will be plumb out of nonfiction memoirs about her demon children growing up in Vermont.
And I just am not prepared to live that lifestyle yet,
Bottom line: Subcommitteeforming it is,
prereview
sometimes i go so long without truly enjoying a book from first page to last that i forget how to even rate them.
review to come /,!!!!
tbr review
there's a distinct possibility i'm in love with shirley jackson,