Raising Demons [Paperback]

Shirley Jackson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (1968)
• ASIN: B000Z45W2M
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,337,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1919. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story 'The Lottery', which was published in 1948. 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Eisenhower Years and All Those Dears--With Attitude!, May 30, 2004

By 

Allen Smalling "Constant Reader," (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Raising Demons (Paperback)

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RAISING DEMONS is the second and last of mystery writer Shirley Jackson's autobiographical accounts of her life as a small-town mommy in bucolic Bennington, Vermont in the Baby Boomer Fifties. Although many of the chapters in this book were originally published as short stories in various women's magazines and the NEW YORKER, in final form together the work functions as a good chronological novel set in the "Together-ness" mid-fifties.

But if the prospective reader thinks that Shirley Jackson's acceptance of the roles of Housewife, Mother of Four and Faculty Wife doomed her to an empty-headed vacuity, think again: there's a universe of verbal subversion going on in her mind and on these pages.

At the time RAISING DEMONS opens little Barry, with the remarkably flexible nomenclature characteristic of this family now called "Mr. Beekman," is headed firmly toward toddlerhood and the older children (counting upwards Sally, Jannie, and elder son Laurie) are all spaced conveniently three years apart. And that, to hear her tell it, may be just about the only orderly domestic act Mrs. Stanley Hyman, the social and familial name for Our Heroine Shirley Jackson, saw to conclusion. Not that her children were outrageously disruptive or combative (but perhaps a bit more than other people's kids, she worries) -- but they certainly had their own ways of talking and thinking.

Laurie fell in love with jazz and jivester slang, to the point where his father started fining him for that "oleaginous jargon" as though terms like "real cool" were real obscenity. Jannie's take on logic was to enter a house filled with toxic gas from a dead, antique refrigerator and when her mother confronted her with "That sign says DO NOT ENTER," countered with "I didn't think you meant me." (And I thought that trait only emerged in adolescence!) Sally so desperately wanted to help Laurie find a critical gym shoe for his basketball game that she ignored Dad's edict not to perform white magic:
" 'Laurie's shoe is weaker and creaker and cleaker and breaker and fleaker and greaker . . .' Sally wound through the study, eyes shut, chanting. Barry came behind her, doing an odd little two-step. . . 'Now wait a minute here,' my husband began. . . . 'We're just untending,' Barry explained reassuringly."

Quite often Shirley graciously consents to make herself the butt of the humor--and then, like a good mystery writer, offers a twist ending as she barbs her way out. When her husband joins the faculty at Bennington College, watch how la Jackson confesses mixed feelings about hubby's (all-girl) students as she breaks dams of faint praise: "I never saw any student, of whatever year, kick a sick cat. They were, as I say, neat, well-mannered, and demure. Their clothes were subdued, sometimes so much as to be invisible. . . "

As with LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES, even the most trivial of domestic upsets turn, in Jackson's high prowess, into high drama. And RAISING DEMONS is consistently funny and consistently filled with a wide variety of humor: sitcom-but-twisty outcomes, barbed repartee, and perhaps best of all the legendary Shirley Jackson revelations of the occult on brilliant display, here a kind of mythical kiddie-occult that at times out-Tolkiens Tolkien. All from their own little minds, too, which makes it all the more endearing and frightening. I know Modern Moms who have read RAISING DEMONS and love it for its pinpoint accuracy of family life, archaic references to dry-clutch automobiles and afternoon newspapers notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, and for no reason I can fathom, RAISING DEMONS is out of print as of this emendation (January 2006), except for a two-in-one edition of LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS put together by the Quality Paperback Book Club people. If DEMONS proves difficult to purchase, the neophyte might want to try out LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES first, because it is cheaper and comes first chronologically. Dollars to (1950s) donuts 'most all readers will be more than happy to scout out RAISING DEMONS after that!

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My All-Time Favorite, February 14, 2000

By 

Jayne S (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising Demons (Paperback)

I received "Raising Demons" as a gift from my teacher in 8th grade (1972) and have read it hundreds of times. I even named my children after the children in the book and find that all-too-often my life as a busy mother parallels Ms. Jackson's, even though the book takes place decades ago. The children are realistically eccentric, the relationships true, the pets demanding, and the house... well, anyone who has ever bought an old house will surely recognize the situations found here.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very funny!, August 2, 2001

By 

S. Herzig (Davenport, IA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Raising Demons (Paperback)

This book should be included in the recent printings of "Life Among the Savages." (especially as "Life" is much too short!) It is very funny and also serves as an historical peek into the flavor of it's time.