Hunting for Savage Demons

Franklin, Ruth.  Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.  New York: Liveright Publishing, 2016
       ISBN: 978-0-87140-313-1

When Shirley Jackson's name is mentioned, people either think of her haunting horror tales such as, "The Lottery," or The Haunting of Hill House, or her tales of "domestic bliss" gathered in Life among the Savages and Raising Demons.  But there is much more to her complicated tale than horror or domestic life.   In Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin tries to open a window on this complicated tale.

Using all the available sources (unpublished diaries, papers, story sketches/drafts, book reviews, publishers records, etc.), Franklin works to bring Shirley Jackson into focus as a fully-rounded person rather than just as a writer.  She spends several chapters on Jackson's early life as well as her husband's (Stanly Edgar Hyman), documenting the underlying passions and phobias each would bring to their life together and to their individual literary endeavors.  Franklin carefully describes the trials, tribulations, and triumphs that Jackson lived through, breaking the book into chapters based on what book or story collection that Jackson was writing at that time.  This structure allows the reader to see how Jackson's life influenced her writing while revealing the effect her writing had on her domestic situation.

Ruth Franklin accomplished her goal of illustrating how domestic issues, the process of writing, and external forces shaped Shirley Jackson's life and literary outpourings.  The reader who finishes Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life will then have more balanced view on what or who haunted Jackson and her tales.