Life among the savages - Shirley Jackson

A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery

'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children'

As well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley Jackson was also a pitch-perfect chronicler of everyday family life. In Life Among the Savages, her caustically funny account of raising her children in a ramshackle house in Vermont, she deals with rats in the cellar, misbehaving imaginary friends, an oblivious husband and ever-encroaching domestic chaos, all described with wit, warmth and plenty of bite.

'Jackson's family chronicles have a genuinely subversive aspect ... Read today, her pieces feel surprisingly modern - mainly because she refuses to sentimentalize or idealize motherhood' The New York Times Book Review

'Comic masterpieces, laced with hints of the discontent that lies beneath' Guardian