*Potential Spoiler Alert Ahead, Proceed with Caution*
One of my favorite traditions every Halloween is to read a spooky book. I have taken a stab at Stephen King, my favorite was "The Stand". I've read a few of the literary classics, my favorite is "Frankenstein". I've devoured a handful of up-and-coming titles such as "A Cosmology of Monsters", "Don't Let the Forest In", and "Mexican Gothic". My favorite of all the spooky reads though has been Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in The Castle".
I recently read the first of Shirley Jackson's memoirs entitled "Life Among the Savages". I couldn't believe how much I felt I had in common with a 1950's housewife! Especially a horror author from New England. If I had never read her fictional works I would have found it impossible that she wrote such intensely psychological horror. But maybe that's part of the greatness of her work, that it came from a woman whose life seemed so removed from her horror novels.
About Shirley Jackson it was said: "While celebrated by reviewers throughout her career, she wasn't welcomed into any canon or school; she's been no major critic's fetish. Sterling in her craft, Jackson is prized by the writers who read her, yet it would be self-congratulatory to claim her as a writer's writer. Rather, Shirley Jackson has thrived, at publication and since, as a reader's writer."
I have to agree that she is this reader's writer. Her works are both unsettling and shocking. You can feel the heartbeat of her characters through the words on the page. Increasing in palpitations as the ghosts scratch the outside of the door or stopping all together when you find out that you've been reading thoughts of a dead girl all along.
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