A very interesting collection of work by Shirley Jackson. From the well known to the hauntingly obscure. Which really would not have been a bad title for this collection. The Lottery is off course the most well known of her short stories, famous in the way that many novels are. As American as Catcher In The Rye and as ageless as anything written by Truman Capote or Tennessie Williams, redolent in a yearning for a small town existence that may or may not have actually existed. Think Smallville if the mayor had have been HP Lovecraft. or maybe do not think that at all. The Summer People is another stand out. A cauctionary tale of just what money cannot buy. as wealthy out of towners outstay their welcome and longer shadows throw shade that takes down their perceptions of where they fit in the food chain. It is an understated but creepingly powerful exercise in less is more. Quite timely too as so many of us the last couple of years have experienced through lock downs how our certainties may be chipped away, in quietly unmanning ways. The fear that our unspoken reliance on those we pay buttons can be taken away to reveal a Babel like wobble. What use would being a million in the black be as the lights flicker off, the water stops running and even the radio falls silent? Unnerving stuff to be sure but beautifully crafted. Like an intricately woven lace doily that reveals itself to be a death trap of a spider web. I once stayed in a counrty house in Galway, a house quite distant from its nearest neighbour. night after night in the room i was staying in I was troubled by restless nights and disturbing dreams I would wake up from, with a sense of some, not seen, standing close by. The double bed I slept in would sage at the edge, as though someone were sitting on it. The final night I slept in that room I awoke with the feeling that some was leaning over me and breathing into my face. That was the last straw and I told my hosts I no longer wished to sleep in that room. when they showed no surprise at this I asked if they knew something they had not told me. Apparently others had experienced this feeling of company in a room where you were the only visible occupant. They had told me nothing, not wanting to plant the idea. As it turned out I had lasted longer than most. Yet to this day I can say i saw nothing in that room but I do not think I would like to spend another night in it. Some of the stories in this collection resonate with this feeling of "otherness". They possess a haunting quality but perhaps not in the manner one usually associates with this word.
