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Unpublished and uncollected work by the celebrated author of The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and other neo-Gothic chillers.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

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).