May 1, 2014
Fictional newlyweds spend a year living with the author Shirley Jackson in this brooding novel.Jackson, largely remembered as the author of macabre horror stories such as "The Lottery," was married to Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic who taught folklore at Bennington College. The couple lived just off campus in a sprawling house filled with books and cats and kids, and it's here that Fred and Rose Nemser come to stay in 1964. Fred, a graduate student, has been hired as Stanley's teaching assistant. While their husbands are occupied with adoring undergrads, a tentative camaraderie strikes up between Shirley and Rose, our narrator. The two women could not be more different. Meek Rose, pregnant at just 19, is in flight from a grimy childhood filled with secrets. Shirley, "a mountain of a woman," is mercurial, droll and possessed of uncanny abilities. "I know what cats think," she tells Rose, whose thoughts she also seems able to invade. No wonder the locals think she's a witch. Yet, as Rose discovers, Shirley is prey to demons of an altogether less supernatural nature, too. Everyone at the house drinks into the night, but she pops pills as well; and though she's accustomed to it, Stanley's philandering evidently pains her. When Rose learns of a student who went missing 18 years earlier, she's unable to resist the notion that Shirley had something to do with it. Merrell (Creative Writing and Literature/Stony Brook; A Member of the Family, 2000, etc.) is no thriller writer, but this unsolved mystery stokes an atmosphere of quiet menace. Her decision to blend fact and fiction adds to a lingering sense of uncertainty, with set pieces-including a cameo for Bernard Malamud-providing comic relief. A sidelong portrait of a category-defying writer dovetails surprisingly snugly with the drama of one young woman's coming-of-age.
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May 15, 2014
When young newlywed Rose Nemser's husband, Fred, secures employment in the English department of Vermont's Bennington College with Stanley Edgar Hyman, they are invited to reside with Hyman and his wife, novelist Shirley Jackson, in their eccentric household. In that year, 1964, Rose and Shirley share a unique friendship, and Rose learns of the many sides to this prolific writer with a flair for the macabre. Was Shirley an insecure mercurial recluse with jealous tendencies? Was the unconventional author a maternal, larger-than-life figure who loved hosting dinner parties for the literary elite, or was she a vengeful eccentric dabbling in witchcraft? When Rose discovers an 18-year-old cold case of a missing young Bennington coed, she immerses herself in the details and begins wondering whether Shirley's macabre thinking crossed over into action. VERDICT Merrell (A Member of the Family) weaves a compelling fictional tale that reads almost like a biography, with a mystery loosely intertwined. With numerous literary references and unique subject matter, this may only appeal to a select niche of mystery readers or literary scholars. [As Entertainment Weekly noted in a recent issue, Jackson, author of the classic short story "The Lottery," is enjoying a resurgence with Penguin reissuing her novels and the Library of America edition of Novels and Stories.--Ed.]--Mary Todd Chesnut, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 15, 2014
Newly married and pregnant at 19, Rose joins her husband, Fred, when he accepts a posting as a graduate teaching assistant at Bennington College, working for Stanley Hyman. The job comes with the so-called perk of living with Hyman and his wife, the notorious real-life author Shirley Jackson. Rose is smitten with Shirley, in thrall not only to her authorial prowess but also to the rumors that swirl around her like so many poisonous arrows regarding accusations of witchcraft and Shirley's role in the disappearance of one of Stanley's student paramours. Rose remains ever loyal, however, until Shirley accuses Rose of seducing Stanley in the wake of Rose's discovery of Fred's student dalliance. Jackson has always been one of the more intriguing and misunderstood writers of her generation, a woman writer at the cusp of feminism's second wave who nevertheless was erroneously dismissed for writing mere domestic fiction. Merrell brings this complicated and compelling woman to life through the kind of taut and intimate thriller Jackson herself would have been proud to call her own.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)