There’s an old-fashioned feel to Jackson’s language and setups, but her stories never fail to deliver. For fans of...
Unpublished and uncollected work by the celebrated author of The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and other neo-Gothic chillers.
It’s fitting that this gathering by Jackson, who died half a century ago, should open with a perfectly crafted little story called “Paranoia.” Unfolding with the to-the-second pacing of a Twilight Zone episode, it finds a seemingly blameless fellow being pursued on a crosstown bus, into shops, and down city streets by an affectless fellow in a “light hat.” He’d like to tell the cops—but what is there to tell, apart from the fact that someone seems to be tailing him? Good thing his wife is waiting for him at home, but….Best known for her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson had a knack for finding the sinister in the ordinary; when presented with creepier props, she could really go to town, as when, in an early story, a young child threatens to steal away a doll belonging to a mild-mannered spinster of a schoolteacher, “a limp thing, with a gourd for a head and a scrap of red silk for a dress.” If you ever needed an explanation for why poltergeists always find their ways into homes with children, there it is. Even the pieces classified as domestic humor have an arch edge, as with one story that finds a mother wondering who left a hose out to freeze: “Not that the question is of the slightest importance, anyway. What’s important is to get it thawed out and put away. Let the dead past bury its dead, I firmly believe.” That’s a lot of portent for a stretch of rubber—and when Jackson gets to the frying pan and the scissors, things get dicier still. The volume closes with Jackson’s reflections on her work, in which she recounts dreams of closed gates and secretive conversations, nicely bracketing that paranoiac exercise that begins the book.
There’s an old-fashioned feel to Jackson’s language and setups, but her stories never fail to deliver. For fans of midcentury suspense, it doesn’t get much better than this.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9766-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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