Rating: 
Summary: If tamed, LOL so high it could replace internal combustion..
Review: .
"Our house is old, noisy and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books . . ." This is the beginning of the curiously powerful--and stealth-assault funny--LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES (1952), memoirs of a Mommy, a Daddy, and a powerhouse-ful of children who give up post-World War II's overcrowded Manhattan housing market for roomier digs in a remote Vermont town. These are certainly life-with-kids family memoirs of the late 1940s and early 1950s, but to leave it at that would miss the point--like saying that Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is an anthropological study of a ritualistic New England town, or that THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN is a treatise on rafting the Mississippi River before the Civil War. The author of LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES is, in fact, Shirley Jackson, and this is the first half of her two comic novels about life with small children. (The latter half being the later, and unfortunately more difficult to find RAISING DEMONS, published in 1957.) I'm not revealing too much to pass on that the hick town just happens to be Bennington, Vermont, the one with the all-female college; and that the harried Papa taught there. And when Mommy climbed into bed late at night "with a mystery" there's a good chance she was working on one of her own stories and a portable typewriter, a pack of cigarettes and a snifter of brandy climbed into bed with her. In LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES, even the most please-don't-eat-the-daisies events usually hide a shiv or a shiver somewhere amidst the sitcom. When the financially strapped family scrapes up enough cash for some day help, they interview and hire an escaped felon; later they tangle with a motorcycle mama, the ultimate Effie Klinker of negative IQ, and an over-the-top fundamentalist who frosted her cookies with "Repent, Sinner." Not to mention: "From the girls' room, small voices rose in song, and I listened happily, thinking how pleasant it was," reminisces la Jackson. "[Just later] I was out of bed in one leap and racing down the hall. 'Baby ate a spider, Baby ate a spider,' was what they were singing." Maybe it's just the mixed blessings of heredity--and all those thousands of books--that the marriage of a college professor and a celebrated author would produce a growing family of kids so bright, inquisitive, creative, and, um, let's call it individualistic. "I frequently call [daughter Jannie] Anne and her father very often calls her Jean. Her brother calls her Honey, Sis, and Dopey, Sally calls her Nannnie, and she calls herself, variously, Jean, Jane, Anne, Linda, Barbara, Estelle, Josephine, Geraldine, Sarah, Sally, Laura, Margaret, Marilyn, Susan, and--imposingly--Mrs. Ellenoy. The second Mrs. Ellenoy. . . [M]y husband . . . is addressed in all variants of father from Pappy to Da, even--being a man not easily thrown off balance--Mr. Ellenoy." Son Laurie was so incensed by his temporary amnesia following his bicycle's crash with a car that he made the ambulance driver run HOME with the lights and siren on, "an extremely proud Jannie sitting beside him and traffic separating on either side." Was life fair to Shirley Jackson? Well, she did produce (and by this book's end) four radiant children, two boys and two girls, all spaced an even three years apart. And she hung her laundry in the basement to dry, just like her neighbors told her to, after the backyard clothes line had flung it indignantly to the ground several times. But the nurses at the hospital were SO cross at her for yelling when she was in deep labor with Sally. And she got blacklisted by the PTA when Jannie said there was a woman at the door who wanted a dollar and Shirley, upstairs painting, assumed it was just another of Jannie's invisible friends . . . Sadly, Shirley Jackson, person and author, later on became too dependent on chocolate, liquor, cigs and even amphetamines and did not live to see her fiftieth birthday. But while she was alive she gave us a treasury of suspense and horror fiction. Equally worth celebrating, I think, are LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS. Funny as Hell, and occasionally funny like Hell. My lit-chat group ran into LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES two years ago and despite initial misgivings based on its genre, unanimously loved it.
Rating:
Summary: If tamed, LOL so high it could replace internal combustion..
Review: .
"Our house is old, noisy and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books . . ." This is the beginning of the curiously powerful--and stealth-assault funny--LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES (1952), memoirs of a Mommy, a Daddy, and a powerhouse-ful of children who give up post-World War II's overcrowded Manhattan housing market for roomier digs in a remote Vermont town. These are certainly life-with-kids family memoirs of the late 1940s and early 1950s, but to leave it at that would miss the point--like saying that Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is an anthropological study of a ritualistic New England town, or that THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN is a treatise on rafting the Mississippi River before the Civil War. The author of LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES is, in fact, Shirley Jackson, and this is the first half of her two comic novels about life with small children. (The latter half being the later, and unfortunately more difficult to find RAISING DEMONS, published in 1957.) I'm not revealing too much to pass on that the hick town just happens to be Bennington, Vermont, the one with the all-female college; and that the harried Papa taught there. And when Mommy climbed into bed late at night "with a mystery" there's a good chance she was working on one of her own stories and a portable typewriter, a pack of cigarettes and a snifter of brandy climbed into bed with her. In LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES, even the most please-don't-eat-the-daisies events usually hide a shiv or a shiver somewhere amidst the sitcom. When the financially strapped family scrapes up enough cash for some day help, they interview and hire an escaped felon; later they tangle with a motorcycle mama, the ultimate Effie Klinker of negative IQ, and an over-the-top fundamentalist who frosted her cookies with "Repent, Sinner." Not to mention: "From the girls' room, small voices rose in song, and I listened happily, thinking how pleasant it was," reminisces la Jackson. "[Just later] I was out of bed in one leap and racing down the hall. 'Baby ate a spider, Baby ate a spider,' was what they were singing." Maybe it's just the mixed blessings of heredity--and all those thousands of books--that the marriage of a college professor and a celebrated author would produce a growing family of kids so bright, inquisitive, creative, and, um, let's call it individualistic. "I frequently call [daughter Jannie] Anne and her father very often calls her Jean. Her brother calls her Honey, Sis, and Dopey, Sally calls her Nannnie, and she calls herself, variously, Jean, Jane, Anne, Linda, Barbara, Estelle, Josephine, Geraldine, Sarah, Sally, Laura, Margaret, Marilyn, Susan, and--imposingly--Mrs. Ellenoy. The second Mrs. Ellenoy. . . [M]y husband . . . is addressed in all variants of father from Pappy to Da, even--being a man not easily thrown off balance--Mr. Ellenoy." Son Laurie was so incensed by his temporary amnesia following his bicycle's crash with a car that he made the ambulance driver run HOME with the lights and siren on, "an extremely proud Jannie sitting beside him and traffic separating on either side." Was life fair to Shirley Jackson? Well, she did produce (and by this book's end) four radiant children, two boys and two girls, all spaced an even three years apart. And she hung her laundry in the basement to dry, just like her neighbors told her to, after the backyard clothes line had flung it indignantly to the ground several times. But the nurses at the hospital were SO cross at her for yelling when she was in deep labor with Sally. And she got blacklisted by the PTA when Jannie said there was a woman at the door who wanted a dollar and Shirley, upstairs painting, assumed it was just another of Jannie's invisible friends . . . Sadly, Shirley Jackson, person and author, later on became too dependent on chocolate, liquor, cigs and even amphetamines and did not live to see her fiftieth birthday. But while she was alive she gave us a treasury of suspense and horror fiction. Equally worth celebrating, I think, are LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS. Funny as Hell, and occasionally funny like Hell. My lit-chat group ran into LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES two years ago and despite initial misgivings based on its genre, unanimously loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant and Cute.
Review: A nice read, delightful author. Very tame subject matter. Simply cute and easy, probably a good vacation read.
Rating:
Summary: Not scary, just funny
Review: At one time, Shirley Jackson was both the scariest and the funniest writer in America. This book may come as a surprise to fans of "The Lottery", but don't neglect it on that account; it's still vintage Jackson, complete with a rambling old house (this time not haunted). This is hands down the funniest book about raising children ever written; somehow it manages to treat children as surreal and other (the savages of the title) without ever being condescending. The sequal, _Raising Demons_, isn't quite as good, but is still well worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING!
Review: I have read many of Shirley Jackson's mystery novels and loved all of them!But, when my mom suggested that i read this book and said that it was funny, i thought she was being sarcastic, but i laughed from the time i opened the book until i read the last page.
Rating: 
Summary: On the other side...in the midst of reading these books:
Review: It's wierd to read this after "the Lottery," etc....I keep waiting for something, anything, to go bump. This is a story of her four children and some of their adventures. Though I'm told that these two books were only based on fact, they are still an entertaining read. I felt like I'm reading the most untragic book,"Adventures of Shirley Jackson, Housewife"....Her horror stories are full of big and little nightmares; to me these two stories are like a day-trip.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: It's wierd to read this after "the Lottery," etc....I keep waiting for something, anything, to go bump. This is a story of her four children and some of their adventures. Though I'm told that these two books were only based on fact, they are still an entertaining read. I felt like I'm reading the most untragic book,"Adventures of Shirley Jackson, Housewife"....Her horror stories are full of big and little nightmares; to me these two stories are like a day-trip.
Rating:
Summary: Roughing it in Suburbia
Review: Jackson, best known for the short story, "The Lottery," and the novel, The Haunting of Hill House, also wrote this collection of humorous essays, gathered together from their original appearances in publications such as Mademoiselle, Harper's, Good Housekeeping, and others. Given her famous work, and her reputation for brooding, intensely psychologically work, this is definitely a departure. Completely autobiographical, with a slight amount of exaggeration, this is an extremely funny book--I'm talking laugh out loud funny. It begins as Jackson and her husband move from New York City to the Vermont suburbs (I guess they commuted by train, and neither of them had to be there daily) with their two children. While there, Jackson discovers the "joys" of country living, rural schooling, and childbirth twice more. Maybe it's just me, but I always put Jackson on the same footing with Dorothy Parker, as someone quite cynical about the world. Reading this collection, one does not get that feeling at all. Jackson shows herself to be quite laissez faire, flowing with the daily vicissitudes of suburban life, even, heaven forbid, a housewife. My favorite section here was about their eldest son's first weeks at school. Laurie returns home with daily stories about Charles, a child who is obviously up to no good. The first day Charles was spanked for being fresh. The second, he hit the teacher. The next, he gets spanked for hitting the teacher again. Then he bounced the seesaw on a head of a little girl. He had to stand in the corner the next day for refusing to quit pounding his feet on the floor. The next day, his blackboard privileges are revoked because he threw chalk. Around the household, doing a "Charles" became a synonym for doing something bad. When Parent-Teacher week comes up, Jackson and her husband are dying of curiosity to meet Charles' mother. Finally finding the teacher, Jackson enters a conversation with her: "Laurie usually adjusts very quickly," I said. "I suppose this time it's Charles' influence." "Charles?" "Yes," I said, laughing, "you must have your hands full in that kindergarten, with Charles." "Charles?" she said. "We don't have any Charles in the kindergarten." As a kicker, the following line appears in the indica to this volume: "The section which was originally published as 'Charles' in Mademoiselle and The Lottery is included here at the request of the author's older son."
Rating:
Summary: Kids, you can't live with 'em, you can't sell 'em
Review: Shirley Jackson's slightly warped view of being a wife and mother is more than just the story of Every Mom. It offers those of us who came to parenthood in the 80s and 90s a wonderfully irreverant look at the world's very oldest profession -- through a 50-year-old glass. To imagine the classic 1950s mother searching for her bedside ashtray or threatening to lock her daughter's precious dolls out in the cold overnight is music to the habitually self-critical modern-day mother's ears. That we all share Jackson's joy and angst would be enough. But her stories about having children in the 1950s also serve to show us how different and how much the same the experience was for our own mothers back when things were supposed to be so much easier. They weren't and that's a strange but comforting thought.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and refreshing
Review: Shirley Jackson's wicked humour (don't miss the story of "Charles," for example) kept me laughing, and it was especially refreshing to step into a (let's face it, far more realistic) world where children could have a score of imaginary playmates (the family of Mrs Ellenoy), a son could be a bit of a discipline problem, the baby could eat a spider ... and no one ran to the self-help aisle or shrink just because kids were kids. I had assumed that this was a biographical work, with the adventures just a bit exagerrated, until I read Shirley's (excellent) biography "Private Demons." Somehow, the stories were not as funny when I came to know that some of them were fiction, merely based on the children's traits. This tale will never bore, and will give anyone a good dose of laughter. Perhaps those who now have children of the age which Shirley's were then will relax a bit realising that raising children was never a joy ride - but there is no need, today, to make it more difficult than it has to be.
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