Let Me Tell You

Reviews / Votes

An amazing writer -- Neil Gaiman The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... She is a true master -- A. M. Homes Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written -- Donna Tartt The stories range from sketches and anecdotes to complete and genuinely unsettling tales, somewhat alarming and very creepy ... The whole of the book offers insights into the vagaries of her mind, which was ruminant and generous, accommodating such diverse figures as Dr. Seuss and Samuel Richardson ... For those of us whose imaginations, and creative ambitions, were ignited by 'The Lottery', Jackson remains one of the great practitioners of the literature of the darker impulses -- Paul Theroux * New York Times * Like a lot of people I read 'The Lottery' when I was young, in an anthology of short stories from the New Yorker, and never forgot it. Let Me Tell You is a rich, enjoyable compendium of Jackon's unpublished short fiction and occasional writings, kicking off with a story of a dozen pages, 'Paranoia', which I won't forget, either -- Tom Stoppard * TLS Books of the Year * Many of her early pieces, unpublished or unfinished, feature here; some are polished while others are imperfect, and fascinating in the same way as Go Set a Watchman in revealing the author's process and showing us the growing shape of a story. Sometimes she ventures into the surreal and macabre, sometimes she gives us domestic satire, and sometimes there are all these things in one story or essay ... Jackson's non-fiction on family life might be seen as a precursor to Nora Ephron's short writings for its wit, warmth and observation. Here she excels in making the uninteresting, domestic and banal appear interesting, odd and unnerving ... It is a collection that leads to an appreciation of unfinished or unpublished works. Jackson's writings make us see the value of leaving some things incomplete -- Arifa Akbar * Independent * Several of the stories are so striking ... Jackson is a fascinating writer [and] Let Me Tell You shows her dashing between the uncanny and the cosy -- Theo Tait * The Sunday Times * An eclectic mix, comprising short stories with the trademark Jackson weirdness, but also those light, comical family pieces, which she wrote in abundance for The New Yorker, among others ... Perhaps Let Me Tell You will bring her to a wider audience - and allow Shirley Jackson to claim her rightful position as one of the most important writers, gothic or otherwise, of the 20th century -- David Barnett * Independent * What's impressive about these stories is the quality ... All have a circularity that suggests entrapment, a major theme of Jackson's later works, but they also hold up as spell-binding stories in their own right. These aren't practice works, rehearsals for the main event ... The seemingly impossible alliance of warmth and horror is what made Jackson's fiction so remarkable, and in this volume we discover a little more about how that alliance came about. She treated being a mother of four with humour and respect, whilst crafting her world into fiction, in order to make us shiver. Like the best writers, she maintained the trickiest of balancing acts, both in art and in life -- Lesley McDowell * Independent * An excellent new collection ... The book includes previously uncollected short fiction, some of it as unnerving as her most famous work. But much of it consists of essays, lectures on the craft of writing, and funny, cheerful tales of family life * Irish Times * Remember the chilling excitement of reading Jackson's 'The Lottery' for the first time? You'll have that same experience over and over again with this new collection * Library Journal * This collection contains eerie, unsettling stories, humorous pieces on domestic life, reviews and intimate essays on writing. A seance with the mistress of Gothic fiction * Sunday Telegraph * Who knew that the author of the creepy classic short story 'The Lottery' was such a hilarious commentator on the domestic life? * Vogue * A master of uncanny suspense, Jackson wrote sentences that crept up on the reader, knife in hand. Throughout these previously unpublished pieces, whether short stories about Main Street murders or Jackson's description of her own eerie writing process (sleepwalking and ghosts helped), the author's mordant wit and nuanced prose are often shiver-inducing * New York magazine * Some of [the essays] bubble over with the sort of earnest intelligence that feels like sitting down for a cup of coffee with Jackson herself ... But like any good Shirley Jackson story, the sense of unease is what keeps us reading. Jackson has a well-earned reputation as a master of ghost stories where people are possibly haunting themselves, and some of her finest essays in Let Me Tell You are just that ... [The book] feels like an uncanny dollhouse: everything perfectly rendered, but something deliciously not quite right * NPR.Org * Jackson's wry observations about keeping house in the 1950s (collected here along with essays, letters and stories) are as spot-on today as they were when she wrote them * Good Housekeeping * Jackson, an inspiration to writers from Stephen King to Joyce Carol Oates, dared to look on the dark side and imagine the unimaginable, as demonstrated in this volume of her uncollected and unpublished work * Publishers Weekly *