Life among the savages ; Raising demons [Paperback]

Shirley Jackson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1998

Although now better known for her haunting fiction, in the 1950's Shirley Jackson charmed millions with her best-selling domestic reminiscences, Life Among the Savages (1953) and Raising Demons (1957), affectionate, hilarious and sophisticated tales of dubious parental equilibrium in the face of four children, their friends both real and imaginary, assorted cats and dogs, criminal household help, impudent teachers, and other minutiae of domestic existence.

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Quality Paperback Book Club; First Edition edition (1998)
• ISBN-10: 0965780066
• ISBN-13: 978-0965780063
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #665,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS GOOD NEWS; TWO CLASSICS TOGETHER IN ONE VOLUME, January 7, 2006

By 

Allen Smalling "Constant Reader," (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life among the savages ; Raising demons (Paperback)

Dear Reader,

This is not a review of Shirley Jackson's wonderful semi-autobiographical memoirs of her life with boisterous and at times eerily unsettling kids in Vermont -- LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES in 1952 followed by RAISING DEMONS in 1957. They have been well covered in reviews under their respective titles.

I write this--hoping it will get thru the Amazon filters--because this is the first time since the late 1980s that BOTH works together in one volume have become available. It was the Quality Paperback Book Club that published the duo back in 1988, and now it's available again thru Book-of-the-Month Club, Smart Reader Rewards, QPBC and other BOMC affiliates.

If you read the reviews you'll see that most people who read the (in print) LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES want to read RAISING DEMONS as well, but are usually stymied by its being out of print. Now interested readers can get both works in one volume at a good price. I hope Amazon carries it too.

--allen smalling

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before there were mommy bloggers, there was Shirley Jackson, June 24, 2009

By 

Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Life among the savages ; Raising demons (Paperback)

A wonderful chance to own both of Jackson's domestic memoirs in one, to trace the Hyman family from their apartment in New York to their homes in Vermont, along with pets and a box full of orphaned sporting equipment that never really seems to belong anywhere.

Jackson was a loving chronicler of family life, which might surprise her short story readers, as her stories tend towards the chilling reversal. There are plenty of reversals in these books, but they are comic in nature. Jackson excels at capturing the circling around of family life, the repetition, the endlessness of certain games, arguments and happenings. Her treatment of birthday parties, Little League games, shopping, cooking, enduring, is classic, familiar and most of all loving. She also writes at length of her family pets, the ways and vagaries of animals that possibly no one but the animal's owner could love.

This is also an interesting portrait of small town family life in decades long past, and it's a shock to read how autonomous her kids were, what the costs of things were, how everyone came home for lunch every day. And of course everyone is always smoking and drinking merrily away, because times were different back then.

Writers are by nature observers. When Shirley Jackson brings her sharp eye to bear on her own days spent as wife and mother, you feel so let in, so privileged as a reader to see this intimately into an aspect of someone's real life. I love her fiction, but understand why these books brought her a completely different group of admirers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Stories for Moms, December 29, 2010

By 

Cristal Shanda Lear "Cris" (Cincinnati, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life among the savages ; Raising demons (Paperback)

So the car didn't start and the kids were late to school and you robbed your kids' piggy banks to make sure they had lunch money? It's not the end of the world.

The era is different but the sentiment is the same. Being a mother, under the best of circumstances, is trying and if you're lucky now and again, funny. Although my little savage is off to college now, this book reminds me of the days of "Muffins with Mom" and makes me realize - I'm not so sad about the growing up part after all!

I have quite literally read this volume to pieces and it's a must have a for a second copy.