Life Among the Savages
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  • Published: 5 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241387801
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

Life Among the Savages

Formats & editions
Paperback
5 Sep 2019
EBook
1 Aug 2019
Audiobook
8 Oct 2020
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From the queen of domestic horror, this is a masterpiece of domestic comedy

Shirley Jackson's 1953 classic about life with her husband and four children in rural Vermont is one of America's most celebrated memoirs of family life. Facing badly behaved imaginary friends, intractable bank managers, an oblivious husband and ever-encroaching domestic chaos, Jackson might want to throw her hands up in despair but somehow manages to turn ordinary family experiences into brilliant adventures. Frequently hilarious, always warm and never sentimental, this is a book for anyone who has ever been in a family.
  • Published: 5 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241387801
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story 'The Lottery', which was published in 1949. Her novels - which include The Sundial, The Bird's Nest, Hangsaman, The Road through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House - are characterised by her use of realistic settings for tales that often involve elements of horror and the occult. Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages are her two works of nonfiction. Come Along With Me is a collection of stories, lectures, and part of the novel she was working on when she died in 1965.

Also by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House
We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Popular Penguins
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Lottery
The Missing Girl
Just an Ordinary Day
Dark Tales
See all

Praise for Life Among the Savages

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

Warm and funny ... Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because Jackson refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood

The New York Times

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

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

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
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