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A review by declaired
Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
4.0
I like to start on a positive note and I feel like the Highest Praise I can offer this (or many) books is that I read a scene about a Family Christmas and got the warm fuzzies. It's not too maudlin, too false, too sappy, too spiritual, too close to home - obv your mileage may vary but I'm always impressed when something pulls it off against my spiteful cynicism.
Can't decide if I like this book less than the first memoir (Life Among the Savages) because I read it as an audiobook (no disrespect intended to the narrator, who did an Amazing Job inflecting all the subtleties of the humor and had a great voice), because I read an article that had excerpts from Shirley Jackson's diary about how miserable her marriage was, or because a few of these stories are truly great at depicting an Insufferable husband (but, humorously. humorously?)
It's still a string of mid-century middle class white nuclear family anecdotes, and they are as familiar as television, charmingly relatable, and slyly snarky with the bite all-but-repressed. I like some of the stories quite a bit; I'm very charmed at my perceived insights into the Jackson family (whether or not these insights are true; this book omits quite a lot, not least SJ's own writing, and her family are caricatures as much as characters- I believe she put quite a few of her own words into her eldest son, Laurie's, mouth, just as much as I'm sure he's her favorite at the time of this writing).
Can't decide if I like this book less than the first memoir (Life Among the Savages) because I read it as an audiobook (no disrespect intended to the narrator, who did an Amazing Job inflecting all the subtleties of the humor and had a great voice), because I read an article that had excerpts from Shirley Jackson's diary about how miserable her marriage was, or because a few of these stories are truly great at depicting an Insufferable husband (but, humorously. humorously?)
It's still a string of mid-century middle class white nuclear family anecdotes, and they are as familiar as television, charmingly relatable, and slyly snarky with the bite all-but-repressed. I like some of the stories quite a bit; I'm very charmed at my perceived insights into the Jackson family (whether or not these insights are true; this book omits quite a lot, not least SJ's own writing, and her family are caricatures as much as characters- I believe she put quite a few of her own words into her eldest son, Laurie's, mouth, just as much as I'm sure he's her favorite at the time of this writing).