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Life Among the Savages cover art

Life Among the Savages

By: Shirley Jackson
Narrated by: Kate Handford
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.
©1953 Shirley Jackson (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Short Stories Classics
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Critic reviews

"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)

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Acerbic wit at its best!

The suburbs are full of adventure and chaos if only one has the right eyewear to see it all. Shirley Jackson does not disappoint the reader with her own unique take on what may seem like rural bliss on the outside but is full of the most scalding observational humour.

The narrator brings her own voice to the book which makes the audiobook an even better to experience. This audiobook had me in stitches on the tube, bus and train, making my travel time fun!

I'd recommend this book to anyone who has had the courage to start a family or is contemplating it.

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