3.5
Come Along with Me
ByPublisher Description
A haunting and psychologically driven collection from Shirley Jackson that includes her best-known story "The Lottery"
At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history. In her gothic visions of small-town America, Jackson, the author of such masterworks as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, turns an ordinary world into a supernatural nightmare. This eclectic collection goes beyond her horror writing, revealing the full spectrum of her literary genius. In addition to Come Along with Me, Jackson's unfinished novel about the quirky inner life of a lonely widow, it features sixteen short stories and three lectures she delivered during her last years.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history. In her gothic visions of small-town America, Jackson, the author of such masterworks as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, turns an ordinary world into a supernatural nightmare. This eclectic collection goes beyond her horror writing, revealing the full spectrum of her literary genius. In addition to Come Along with Me, Jackson's unfinished novel about the quirky inner life of a lonely widow, it features sixteen short stories and three lectures she delivered during her last years.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities37 Reviews
3.5
Reed
Created 3 days agoShare
Report
Nikki in Niagara
Created about 2 months agoShare
Report
“Synopses are Spoiler-Free
This collection of works by Shirley Jackson was selected by her husband and published posthumously. He selected what he considered were the best of her unpublished short stories at the time for the core of the book. It starts with the "unfinished" novel she was working on at the time of her death. More fairly I think it deserves to be called the "first chapters" of a novel. Then the book ends with some essays and accompanying stories she told. This is a wide breadth of material and why I rounded the solid 3.75 stars up to a four.
1. Come Along With Me (1965) - This is more the start of a novel than an unfinished novel. It seems similar to her others but more mature writing. We are given the main character, Angela Motorman, and some background information, including ghosts speaking to her. She's found the big old house, here it's a boarding house. And we've been introduced to the set of quirky characters. Angela has given her first seance, a bit of a ruin, and what we have left ends just when it seems the story is ready to take off. It's a perfect introduction. (5/5)
2. Janice (1938) - Only one and a half pages long, Jan gets attention when she finds out she can't go back to school. Too short to say anything about but I think I get the point of this. (2/5)
3. Tootie in Peonage (1942) - Mrs. Taylor wants to hire help around the house and with Tommy but when Tootie arrives for an interview she hires herself and is a rather forward girl who's great with Tommy but has never tried to wash clothes or dishes before and doesn't intend to start now, she prefers reading. (3/5)
4. A Cauliflower in Her Hair (1943) - Virginia is at home when her friend Mille comes over to do algebra homework. Mr Garland likes Millie but Mrs Garland does not. There are sexual undertones here making the innocent scene darker than it seems. (3/5)
5. I Know Who I Love (1946) - Catharine thinks back to when she was 23 and newly independent in New York and her mother was dying. From here, she thinks about her strict childhood, which made her mousey and unlinked by the other children. A morose and bleak story with no hope. (3/5)
6. The Beautiful Stranger (1946) - A woman picks her husband up from a business trip, and on the ride home, she starts to think he's not her husband. An intriguing story with a sudden dark ending. (4/5)
7. The Summer People (1949) - The Allisons have been going out to their cottage on the lake for 17 years and have finally decided to stay longer than Labour Day. They start telling the townsfolk and the reaction isn't exactly warming. This is one of Jackson's classic stories. The atmosphere is humid and overbearing as a storm slowly rolls in. I love this. (5/5)
8. Island (1950) - We have two lonely women, a middle-aged woman caretaker for an elderly dementia patient. Neither has any visitors except the patient's son a few times a year. We see a day in the life of the caretaker and see she is exasperated with the other woman. It is a fairly straightforward story, but there is a very strange part in the middle, and the ending needs interpreting to find the humour. (3/5)
9. A Visit - (1950) - This one is a little longer than the others and a classic. Margaret comes to Clara's for a school holiday of a few months, and when she gets there, the house overtakes everything. It's the first thing she mentions, and the first thing anyone mentions is whether she has had a look around yet. This is a grand estate with a gallery hall, tower, and ballroom. Something strange is going on; Margaret doesn't feel it, but we, the readers, see the signs, and it's up to us to figure it out. Creepy. This is one of my favourites. (5/5)
10. The Rock (1951) - A man and wife and the man's sister vacation on a rock island for the man to recuperate after a long sickness. It seems the sisters intend to cure him of his love of the sea by vacationing on this island in the sea. It's a decent, quiet story, but the ending makes no sense to me. I fear I may be missing some sea reference that may be known to other readers (or not) (2/5)
11. A Day in the Jungle (1952) - A woman leaves her husband and books a couple of nights at a hotel, then starts imagining all sorts of things. This was irritating actually. It started with the typical Jackson housewife, relatable but unhappy, but she became annoying in a bad way. I just didn't like the story or the character. (1/5)
12. Pajama Party (1957) - This is from an essay which eventually was collected into "Raising Demons". It's a hilarious tale of an 11yo birthday pajama party based on her children. (5/5)
13. Louisa, Please Come Home (1960) - On the anniversary of the day she ran away, Louisa listens to her mother on the radio and begs her to come home. This is the story of her running away when she was 18 and why she doesn't go back. This is reread and another of my favourite stories. (5/5)
14. The Little House (1962) - A woman inherits a little house out in the country from her aunt and is just giddy about owning her first home. This turns creepy but gives a good laugh (4/5)
15. The Bus (1965) - Crotchety old Miss Harper does nothing but grumble about her bus ride home, but she falls asleep, and the driver has to wake her up to get off at her stop in the rain. This gets stranger and stranger until its terrifying end. One of my favourites. (5/5)
16. Experience and Fiction (1958) - A lecture Jackson gave on the typical question authors get "Where do you get your ideas from?" From reality, she says and goes on to explain how she alters them to make a story out of it. Very interesting. The first thing I've read from her own pov so far. (5/5)
17. The Night We All Had Grippe (1952) This has a history, first published in a magazine, second used along with the above essay at speaking engagements, and finally collected into the book "Life Among Savages" which I have read. It is a story based on a true-life event of a night her whole family of six plus a dog had Grippe, I guess what we call the flu. It is a humourous story likely to raise a grin if you've ever experienced something similar. (3/5)
18. Biography of a Story (1960) - This is an essay about the short story "The Lottery" and its reception. She speaks of how the story came to be and its publication in "The New Yorker'. Then the rest of the article is direct quotes from letters received divided into three groups. The funny thing is those grouped under 'just plain rude' are so polite by today's standards compared to what you find in online comment sections. It says a bit about society. A good read. (4/5)
19. The Lottery (1948) - Jackson's most famous short story is a classic read in most high schools. The story of a modern town that still makes a human sacrifice for the fall harvest. I've read this about 4 times now I think, maybe 5. It still packs a punch and I can imagine the woman's terror. A bleak story told without wasting a word. (5/5)
20. Notes For a Young Writer (1962) - An essay for aspiring writers that covers all the basics (minus plot). It's a quick primer, do this, don't do that and why. Examples are given on the fly which show her talent at what she's teaching. A bit dry. Not really for those not interested in writing. (3/5)”Krqk
Created 4 months agoShare
Report
Blue_Hamsterrrr
Created 8 months agoShare
Report
conjuringpages
Created 12 months agoShare
Report
About Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. Her novels include We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Sundial, and The Haunting of Hill House.
Laura Miller is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is a senior writer. She is the editor of The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors and the introducer of the Penguin Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House.
Other books by Shirley Jackson
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
Similar Books
Save to a list
0
/30
0
/100
Private List