ISBN Life Among the Savages

Life Among the Savages

In a hilariously charming domestic memoir, America’s celebrated master of terror turns to a different kind of fright: raising children

In her celebrated fiction, Shirley Jackson explored the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. But in Life Among the Savages, she takes on the lighter side of small-town life. In this witty and warm memoir of her family’s life in rural Vermont, she delightfully exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist’s gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature humor, Jackson turns everyday family experiences into brilliant adventures.


About author(s)
Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for “The Lottery,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1948 and went on to become one of the most anthologized stories in American literature. She is the author of six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; four collections of short stories and essays, including Just an Ordinary Day; and two family memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. For many years she lived in North Bennington, Vermont, with her husband, the renowned literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, and their four children. She died on August 8, 1965.