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A review by martrj
Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson
4.0
Come Along With Me has a couple of interesting moments but very much feels like an unfinished fragment of a longer work. The short stories in this volume are great, as good if not better than those collected in The Lottery ('The Summer People', ''The Beautiful Stranger' and 'Louisa, Please Come Home' were my favourites).
The three lectures that close the volume are humourous but also very insightful - covering an author's favourite question, "where do you get your ideas from?", the outrage and confusion generated by the original publication of 'The Lottery' in The New Yorker, and some principles of writing short fiction (which she addresses to her daughter).
Though it's a bit strange to have this volume introduced and edited by her husband given how he was allegedly constantly cheating on her...
Still, it was a great way to close off reading all of Shirley Jackson's work! (Although I still need to read Raising Demons and her other posthumous short story collection.)
The three lectures that close the volume are humourous but also very insightful - covering an author's favourite question, "where do you get your ideas from?", the outrage and confusion generated by the original publication of 'The Lottery' in The New Yorker, and some principles of writing short fiction (which she addresses to her daughter).
Though it's a bit strange to have this volume introduced and edited by her husband given how he was allegedly constantly cheating on her...
Still, it was a great way to close off reading all of Shirley Jackson's work! (Although I still need to read Raising Demons and her other posthumous short story collection.)