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Book Review: When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson edited by Ellen Datlow

cover art for When Things Get Dark edited by Ellen Datlow

When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson edited by Ellen Datlow

Titan Books, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1789097153

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com  )

 

Shirley Jackson couldn’t have known the impact her writing would have on the horror genre, speculative fiction, and literature in general: she was writing to pay the bills. Yet her work has resonated with readers and writers for both its depictions of domesticity, such as her fictionalized memoir, Life Among the Savages, and of the uncanny, seen in short stories like “The Lottery” and her most famous novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (and sometimes both together). In When Things Get Dark, well-known anthology editor Ellen Datlow has collected tales by talented writers of horror, the uncanny, and the weird, inspired by Shirley Jackson’s work.

 

A number of stories take place within suburbia, with the uncanny just beneath a placid surface. Laird Barron’s “Tiptoe” focuses on uneasy family dynamics and the necessity of keeping up appearances, and “For Sale By Owner” by Elizabeth Hand, is a meandering story about three elderly women with a habit of breaking into empty summer houses who hold a sleepover in an empty, beautiful old house, which turns out to be a disorienting and disturbing experience. In Richard Kadrey’s “A Trip to Paris”, a nod to We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a recent widow planning her escape from her mundane life has her nefarious actions revealed by a stubborn, growing patch of mold on her wall, while Jeffrey Ford’s “The Door in the Fence” documents the strange and surprising changes in the narrator’s next door neighbor after her husband dies.

 

Some stories take direct inspiration from Jackson’s work, such as Carmen Maria Machado’s “A Hundred Miles and a Mile”, which references the “cup of stars” from The Haunting of Hill House, and stories such as “Quiet Dead Things” by Cassandra Khaw and “Hag” by Benjamin Percy that describe insular communities and their deadly rituals like the one in “The Lottery”.

With others, it’s sometimes hard to see the connection, although the stories are interesting. In Seanan McGuire’s dark fairytale “In the Deep Woods; The Light is Different There”, a woman escaping an abusive husband retreats to her family’s lake house, where she discovers the caretakers are not what they seem. John Langan produces a compelling, surreal tale of family, the occult, and mythological creatures in “Something Like Living Creatures”. In the dread-inducing “Money of the Dead”, Karen Heuler addresses the problems with resurrection and obsessive love; Joyce Carol Oates’ “Take Me, I Am Free” is a bleak, heartbreaking story about a child whose angry mother attempts to throw her away; in Josh Malerman’s dystopian “Special Meal”, a young girl discovers the difficulties, and consequences, of hiding knowledge. Genevieve Valentine’s “Sooner or Later, Your Wife Will Drive Home” is a cleverly constructed story about smart women in unlucky situations they can’t escape, something Jackson could certainly relate to. There were a few stories that didn’t hit the mark: “Funeral Birds” petered out at the end, “Refinery Road” and “The Party” left me confused, and “Pear of Anguish” didn’t seem to fit the theme or mood of the anthology.

 

While there are many excellent stories, the three that stood out to me were the previously mentioned “Tiptoe”; “Take Me, I Am Free”, a bleak, heartbreaking story about a child whose angry mother attempts to give her away; and Kelly Link’s “Skinder’s Veil”, a strange tale about a graduate student struggling with writing his dissertation who takes a housesitting job in rural Vermont, with the only rules being that anyone knocking at the back door must be invited in, but the front door should never be opened. Those who come to the back door are an unusual bunch, and the consequences of that summer are significant for him.

 

It’s not necessary to be a fan of Shirley Jackson to enjoy this book, but it does help, especially with Machado’s story, which depends on context from The Haunting of Hill House. If you do pick up When Things Get Dark without having read Jackson first, you will want to by the time you finish. Recommended.

 

Contains: self-harm, torture, suicide, murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on October 28, 2021 by , Reply

Haunted Travels: North Bennington, Vermont: Shirley Jackson’s Hometown

Photo of Jennings Hall at Bennington College

Photo of Jennings Hall at Bennington College in North Bennington, Vermont, courtesy of J.W. Ockler.

America is a haunted country, and as we count down the days till Halloween, Monster Librarian plans to share some destinations for travelers looking to travel someplace special for the Halloween season.

North Bennington, Vermont might seem like a peaceful village, but it’s also where author Shirley Jackson, best known for her novel The Haunting of Hill House and her short story “The Lottery”, lived for most of her married life.  Jackson’s husband, Stanley Hyman, was a professor at Bennington College, and it is speculated that the inspiration for Hill House is the Jennings Music Building on the Bennington College campus. In her book Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life biographer Ruth Franklin suggests that the Everett Mansion near Old Bennington is a better candidate, but two creepy, potentially haunted buildings in the same area means she could have been inspired by both.  This article from Vermont news station NBC5 has some great photos of Jennings Music Building matched to quotes from The Haunting of Hill House, in case your only option for travel is via armchair.

There’s also a story that Jackson based the town square, where a truly monstrous community ritual occurs, in “The Lottery” on Lincoln Square in North Bennington. According to her, while walking through the square on her way home from the post office, she had the idea for the story and immediately wrote it down.  The Fund for North Bennington quotes Jackson’s writing to the San Francisco Chronicle about the story. Jackson writes:

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

J.W. Ockler has written a little about both locations here.

Jonah Daniell has written up a walking tour of Jackson-related locations for Literary Bennington: in addition to visiting Jennings Hall and Lincoln Square, Jackson and her family lived in a house at 12 Prospect Street at first and later bought a house at 66 Main Street. Both of these are now private residences. Powers Market, where Jackson did her shopping, is still there, and if you visit the library, you can see a cat statue she used to own.  For such a noted writer, the town where she lived and wrote hasn’t done much to recognize her, although recently the local literary festival was renamed for her and the date moved to June 27, the date of the events in “The Lottery.” If you’re a Jackson fan and in or near Vermont, put North Bennington, Vermont on your bucket list.

 

Posted on October 1, 2021 by , Reply

Musings: The Fate of Rabbits in Watership Down

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Scribner, 2005 (reprint edition)

ISBN-13: 978-0743277709

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

I am reading Watership Down with my daughter.  It’s one of my favorite books. She is a little younger than I was when I was first given my copy, but I read it by myself and we are reading it together (never let anyone tell you that kids outgrow reading aloud with loved ones). It’s a long book and it’s possible that many of you have never read it, although you might have been traumatized by the movie as a child (I’ve never seen the movie, myself). People who love a fast-moving plot might lose patience with Watership Down and its fearful, brave group of rabbits on their journey to a new home. But stick with it, and the personalities of the rabbits and their dilemmas start to catch you.

So far, in our reading, the rabbits have escaped arrest, fled into a forest, successfully avoided a skunk and a dog, crossed a river, crossed a road, and traveled for a long distance to finally find what looks like a safe place for a new home, only to be approached by a large, well-fed, and generous rabbit who offers to adopt them into a nearby warren where all the rabbits are large and well-fed, there are no threats and no need to search for food. My Goblin Girl looked at me and said, “These rabbits are going to sacrifice other rabbits, aren’t they, so they can stay well-fed and healthy?”

Have I mentioned that I just re-read “The Lottery”? This prediction gave me chills.

I’m going to spoil the story for you and say that’s kind of exactly what happens.The rabbits in the warren have an unspoken arrangement with the farmer nearby. He kills off all their enemies and leaves them vegetable heap scraps, and they pretend they don’t know what has happened to rabbits that go missing because he’s caught them in a trap.

“Either that, or they’re cannibals”.

Cannibal rabbits?

Given her second guess, I don’t think she read ahead.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the rabbits are too nice and too healthy and that’s always a trap. Like in The Silver Chair, the giants were kind to Eustace and Lucy but their cookbook had a recipe on “How to Cook Man”. So the rabbits either want to sacrifice Hazel or eat him”.

She’s currently leaning more toward the “cannibal” theory, rather gleefully. Never let it be said that children’s literature is sunny all the time. Those cute, fluffy, bunnies clearly are dangerous creatures. As is a well-read child.

Watership Down is sometimes read as an allegory dealing with different ways of organizing society. And this part of the novel tells us a lot about our current moment. The rabbits of the warren are willing to ignore any question that might force them to think about the brutality behind the bargain they have made, because as long as they don’t, they can enjoy a comfortable, and mostly secure life. They have normalized the disappearance of friends and family as just part of the price they pay to keep their lives easy.

The rabbits of the warren are actually scarier than the people in “The Lottery”. In “The Lottery”, everyone knows someone participating in the drawing is going to be next. The consequence is totally horrific, but at least people know what’s going on. The rabbits of the warren, though, don’t tell Hazel’s band about the arrangement they have with the farmer, that he sets traps to catch them in exchange for their easy life. Instead, they welcome the new rabbits, whose presence makes it less likely that the original rabbits will be the ones trapped, so Hazel’s bunch don’t know what to expect. The original rabbits don’t have to see what happens, so as long as they don’t talk about the missing, they can pretend nothing’s wrong. It’s not viscerally horrific like the events of “The Lottery”, but the “I didn’t see the consequences of my actions so it never happened” attitude is terrifying, because it is so real. It’s a good thing this is a story about rabbits.

I can see why my daughter prefers the cannibal rabbit theory. Nothing says “it can’t happen here” like a carnivorous bunny of evil.

Beyond the particulars, here, I want to say that the predictions she made, based on things she’s read in the past, show how essential it is to read, and hopefully, to read widely. If everyone could see the shape of a narrative, and think critically about the words set in front of them, the world, I think, would be a better place. I don’t care what format you are using for your reading, DO IT. And talk about it with as many people as you can. Seriously, I am a boring person to listen to if you don’t want to hear about books, but I will talk to you about them as much as I can.

The political implications of Watership Down are not something I noticed as a kid and they aren’t related to why I’m reading it with the Goblin Girl now. I just loved the story, and it’s worth reading just for the adventure of it. But I see them now, and just how very human Richard Adams’ rabbits are.

Watership Down is not horror, by a long shot, but it does show how the horrific can become an everyday, normalized experience. So, how’s your reading going?

 


 

Posted on March 14, 2017 by , Reply
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