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LET ME TELL YOU

Name: LET ME TELL YOU
Author: Shirley Jackson
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9766-8

NEW STORIES, ESSAYS, AND OTHER WRITINGS

by Shirley Jackson ; edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman & Sarah Hyman Dewitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

There’s an old-fashioned feel to Jackson’s language and setups, but her stories never fail to deliver. For fans of...

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Unpublished and uncollected work by the celebrated author of The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and other neo-Gothic chillers.

It’s fitting that this gathering by Jackson, who died half a century ago, should open with a perfectly crafted little story called “Paranoia.” Unfolding with the to-the-second pacing of a Twilight Zone episode, it finds a seemingly blameless fellow being pursued on a crosstown bus, into shops, and down city streets by an affectless fellow in a “light hat.” He’d like to tell the cops—but what is there to tell, apart from the fact that someone seems to be tailing him? Good thing his wife is waiting for him at home, but….Best known for her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson had a knack for finding the sinister in the ordinary; when presented with creepier props, she could really go to town, as when, in an early story, a young child threatens to steal away a doll belonging to a mild-mannered spinster of a schoolteacher, “a limp thing, with a gourd for a head and a scrap of red silk for a dress.” If you ever needed an explanation for why poltergeists always find their ways into homes with children, there it is. Even the pieces classified as domestic humor have an arch edge, as with one story that finds a mother wondering who left a hose out to freeze: “Not that the question is of the slightest importance, anyway. What’s important is to get it thawed out and put away. Let the dead past bury its dead, I firmly believe.” That’s a lot of portent for a stretch of rubber—and when Jackson gets to the frying pan and the scissors, things get dicier still. The volume closes with Jackson’s reflections on her work, in which she recounts dreams of closed gates and secretive conversations, nicely bracketing that paranoiac exercise that begins the book.

There’s an old-fashioned feel to Jackson’s language and setups, but her stories never fail to deliver. For fans of midcentury suspense, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9766-8

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON
by Shirley Jackson ; edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman with Bernice M. Murphy

- BOOK REVIEW
SHIRLEY JACKSON'S "THE LOTTERY"
by Shirley Jackson adapted by Miles Hyman illustrated by Miles Hyman

- BOOK REVIEW
The Really Good Witch
by Shirley Jackson

- SEEN & HEARD
‘Lost’ Shirley Jackson Story Has Been Published

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.