Description

‘Hilarious, subversive, sharp without being lethal, and loving without an ounce of sentiment, Shirley Jackson’s more-or-less autobiographical account of life as a mother of four and faculty wife (and brilliant writer) is an eternal, comic joy’ Amy Bloom

‘Our new house was waiting for us, eager, expectant, and empty’

Shirley Jackson skewered the trials of domestic life in 1950s America with wry wit and uncanny precision. In this sequel to Life Among the Savages, her four offspring have now grown into fully-fledged demons. As their house starts to burst at the seams, the Jackson clan somehow manage (without really planning it) to move into a larger home, only to take the chaos – absent furniture, vanishing children, misbehaving refrigerators, an avalanche of books – right along with them.

Publisher Review

A housewife-mother's frustrations are transformed by a deft twist of the wrist into, not a grim account of disintegration and madness, still less the poisoning of her family, but light-hearted comedy. -- Joyce Carol Oates