The Summer People (Shirley Jackson)

Today is Labor Day and, at least it is on the other side of the Atlantic. And I associate Labor Day with one horror story of Shirley Jackson. I first read it in the anthology of her short stories Dark Tales. Since then, it is part of my early countdown to the countdown to Halloween, a staple I try to read every Labor Day. It's called The Summer People, about an elderly couple from New York, the Allisons, who spend every summer in their lakeside cottage in the country, always leaving on Labor Day. Except one year, when they decide to stay longer because of warm weather. And this is where their nightmare starts. The locals start getting passive-aggressive, warning them in vague terms that no "summer people" ever remained there after Labor Day. They stop providing the couple with kerosene and groceries, then their phone line is cut and their car won't start. I don't want to give more away, but it's a brilliant and subtle (well, it's Shirley Jackson after all) tale of eerie unease. You can read it here. As for my take on the story, it's this: never think it's still summer when September starts. Also: autumn comes faster than you think and you should respect that. You're welcome.

Hill House

This is my third countdown to Halloween post today. When I say I have a lot to blog about, I mean it. Anyway, I blogged before about The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, one of the great "modern" horror classics, now a Netflix TV series. I have been watching the series, irregularly, and I have been enjoying its sober approach to horror. But this is not what I have been wanting to blog about tonight. I wanted to quote the beginning of the novel, the way Hill House is introduced. Here it is: "No live organism can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; every larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stodd by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood  so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone." So there you have it. No monster, no machete wielding maniac, just a setting that oozes unease and malevolence. Read this tonigh before bed.

Dark Tales

For today's countdown to Halloween's reading suggestion, Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson. Because you can't go wrong with Shirley Jackson on Halloween, although you might want to read this book fairly early in the countdown. I say this because not all these tales have supernatural elements (although many do), but they are all very dark indeed. In The Possibility of Evil, a seemingly harmless old lady sends poison pen letters, in Paranoia the commute of an ordinary man turns into a nightmarish pursuit where literally everyone he sees seems to be scheming against him, in What a Thought a wife suddenly harbours murderous thoughts against her husband, in The Summer People a couple is punished in a passive-agressive way by villagers for wanting to stay in their summer cottage after Labor Day, for reasons that remain unknown. And there are more. Shirley Jackson is a master of terror born out of alienation.

The Haunting of Hill House

For today's countdown to Halloween post, another book suggestion. You will have a good many like these from me, as Halloween is for me and since I am an adult mainly a literary experience. I guess it is the same for many people. So I suggest today that you add The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson on your spooky reading list. I briefly blogged about it in 2017. A classic, maybe the classic of psychological horror. It made me discover Jackson's writing. Like I said in my post on the topic then, the ghosts of the story, if there are any, are barely perceptible presence. What the characters are facing might only be their own demons and Hill House might be feeding on the fears and anxieties of the living. It has been adapted in movies (the first one was allegedly great, the second one rubbish) and I know it is now a TV series, but I'd recommend that you read the novel first.

Psychological horror

This post is for the fellow Halloween lovers among you, a reading suggestion. I know that for the laymen Halloween is far away, but we know it is getting closer and if like me you are already in a spooky mood, you have started reading scary stories. I usually break the ice of not with a classic Gothic tale but with psychological horror. Usually in August, sometimes as early as late July. This year it was this book, last year it was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. In recent years, that was maybe the best horror discovery I made. In it, there is no monster jumping from the dark, no ghost showing up in the flesh (so to speak), no blood, no gore... Only people forced to face their own demons, and maybe they are the only real ghosts of the story. I don't want to give any away, this is not a book review or an analysis, merely a plug. Read it.