Customer Reviews

Life among the savages ; Raising demons

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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

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.

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.

Delightful! The woman author about domesticity BEFORE any of us had ever heard of Erma Bombeck, Jackson is hilarious, erudite, and down-to-solid-earth unstuffy. Incredible that from this genius at describing the humor of home life came that dark brilliance, THE LOTTERY! I
Laughed out loud many times as I read this collection of two works, and found myself to be deeply saddened that her lif ended so young. What a bright gift she was to all of us!

I first resd this book in grade school and found the everyday life of raising children in Shirleys eyes very funny.
Now as an adult having had four children of my own the story rings so true. I have read it several times and love it everytime I read it. I highly recommend it. I wish it would be made into a movie I think it would be wonderful!

I was reading Life among the savages for book club. I tried, I really did but on page 80 I could no longer force myself to read this even though I was supposed to be able to discuss it at book club. My understanding is that the story is really a cool one and very interesting which I can't attest to because I couldn't make myself read it. The writing style was VERY hard to follow. There was a comma about every 5 words which changed from one subject to the next and then finally would end up back where you started. The one person at bookclub that liked it, ironically the girl that chose it, says that's the way she thinks so it was easy for her to follow but for the general person it was a bit to here-and-there-and-there-and-here. I think the story would have been good though and I might just go for the cliff-notes.