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Life Among the Savages
- Author
- Shirley Jackson
- Narrator
- Kate Handford
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 8 October 2020
- Run Time
- 7 hours 6 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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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
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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
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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
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Warm and funny ... Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because Jackson refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood
The New York Times
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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
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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
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Shirley Jackson
- Narrator
- Kate Handford
- Duration
- 7 hours 6 minutes
- Release Date
- 8 October 2020
- ISBN
- 9780141994901
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Memoirs, Short stories, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction
Synopsis
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
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