Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore and purchase a copy of Shirley Jackson’s posthumously published short story collection Come Along With Me. If you have read anything by Shirley Jackson before, you know this has got to be good. If you have never read anything by Shirley Jackson, what are you waiting for?
I, like most of the world, was introduced to Shirley Jackson through reading her short story, The Lottery, in high school. It wasn’t until years later when I picked up her books about raising her children that I realized what a wonderful writer she was. After reading Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages I moved on to We Have Always Lived in the Castle and fell madly in love.
Come Along with Me is the name of her incomplete novel which is about a woman who escapes from her past reinvents herself.
The rest of the book has something for everyone: Humor (Pajama Party and The Night we all had Grippe); Mystery (A Visit and The Bus); Suspense (The Little House); Drama (The Summer People and The Rock); and Non-fiction (Three Lectures: Experience and Fiction, Biography of a Story, and Notes for a Young Writer).
At some point, I must make time to read all her novels. Maybe after this Read-a-Shelf thing is over.
Statistics: Stats: 243 pages (paperback). Started October 2016, finished May 23, 2017.
Clutch Cargo Lips 
I’ve never heard of Shirley Jackson, but I’m going to our library’s website shortly to reserve one of her books. Thanks for the intro!
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Let me know how you like her or even if you don’t. Our dear Wayne/Deloney said that one of her books (We Have Always Lived in the Castle) was the weirdest he’d ever read and was not sure (he was still reading it when he mentioned this) if he liked it. He never did tell me his verdict.
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I heart Shirley Jackson. I have the book Novels and Stories. I thought it was everything she published, but maybe not…
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I bought the most recent biography about her and I like what little I have read so far.
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I also have never heard of Shirley Jackson. I think that when you wrote “along with the rest of the world” you actually meant “along with the rest of the country?”
I always love hearing about new authors loved by people I know, so I’m going to look out for her now. Might check on my library app. Thanks!
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Hmm, perhaps you are right and I meant “along with the rest of the country” but I thought she had a wider readership than just the US.
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