Life Among the Savages/Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson Audiobook

Written by Shirley Jackson
Read by Lesa Lockford
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Life Among the Savages (1953)
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Release date: July 21, 2015
Duration: 06:31:21

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.

Originally published as short stories in women’s magazines in the 1940s, these funny, semi-autobiographical anecdotes from Jackson describe life with three young children in rural Vermont and were first assembled into a novel in 1952. Reader Lesa Lockford handles domesticity in just the right tones: you’re hearing the inflections of the mildly sarcastic, self-deprecating, endlessly exasperated but always loving wife and mother. And Lockford’s children’s voices are age appropriate and believable. Laurie, Jannie, and Sally are alternately demanding, helpful, helpless, annoying, happy, disobedient, and perfectly wonderful in sickness and in health, in school, at home, in the department store, in the restaurant, or engaged in the complex lives of multiple imaginative friends. But this audio edition is best listened to one tale at a time, because literary life with children, like real life with children, can sometimes be repetitive and tiresome.

Raising Demons (1957)
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
File size: 279403 KB
Release date: June 2, 2015
Duration: 09:42:05

n the long out-of-print sequel to Life Among the Savages, Jackson’s four children have grown from savages into full-fledged demons. After bursting the seams of their first house, Jackson’s clan moves into a larger home. Of course, the chaos simply moves with them. A confrontation with the IRS, Little League, trumpet lessons, and enough clutter to bury her alive - Jackson spins them all into an indelible reminder that every bit as thrilling as a murderous family in a haunted house is a happy family in a new home.
“An interesting glimpse into Americana years ago. The author is very droll and the stories she tells are interesting and imaginative. And if this what her children were doing and saying, then the woman deserves more credit than I can give her here.”
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