Anatomy. Monotony.

Edy Poppy

Original Publication: 2005

Original Publication in English Translation: 2018

Original Publisher in English: Dalkey Archive Press

Although I’m filing this as a “Reading the Dalkey Archive” post, it’s actually about two books: by Norwegian author Edy Poppy, translated by May-Brit Akerholt, and by Norwegian author Nina Lykke, translated by B. L. Crook.

And no, I’m not putting these two books together simply because they’re both by female Norwegian authors; I’m putting them in conversation because they’re both about extramarital affairs, the quest for romantic freedom and satisfaction, and jealousy. The two novels explore two different approaches—an open marriage, a secret affair—to the dissatisfaction, or incompleteness, so often found in traditional relationships.

They also present two different types of monotony. In Poppy’s book, the repetitive nature of the couple’s open relationship—taking a lover, returning to one’s “primary” partner, cutting things off, starting again—becomes repetitive. Poppy states this much more eloquently in her conversation with Siri Hustvedt (read the whole conversation ):

I had sent them an early version of the novel, then called:��Speculations Ģ����ý What Once Was, But That I Can Now Only Remember. In return I got a big analysis of my work and a refusal. One criticism was regarding the marriage of my main protagonists, a Norwegian wannabe writer called Vår and her French husband and mentor Lou. It was that the couple’s constant love experimentation was resulting in an unexpected form of monotony. Of repetition. And even though it was meant negatively, I thought, well, that’s very interesting; I want to explore that more, not less! I understood many things about my writing through this rejection.

In Natural Causes, the monotony is of the narrator ��������’s life and marriage. She’s a general practitioner whose patients tend do the same things over and over again. (Sometimes dangerous, such as continuing to smoke and drink, never to diet. Other times not so dangerous, but just as annoying, such as the hypochondriac who never stops coming in hoping for a diagnosis.) And her relationship with her husband, who is obsessed only with participating in skiing competitions, is a total monotonous drag.

There’s an affinity between these two books, a shared urge between the two female protagonists to find the best way to keep going, to live a life that’s fulfilling in a way that feels deserved and right.

*

But let’s back up and take these one at a time.

Anatomy. Monotony. is the story of Vår who, like any good protagonist in a Dalkey book, is struggling to write a book about her relationship with her husband. She’s married to Lou, but early on in their marriage was encouraged by him to maintain an incredibly passionate, almost obsessive relationship with a painter. (He’s referred to as “The Painter” in the excerpts from the novel she’s writing, and referred to as “The Lover” in the “real life” sections of the novel. I’ll use “The Lover” from here on out.)

A thruple, in modern parlance, and one that works . . . sort of . . . for a time. Lou encourages her to pose for, be painted by, and make love to The Lover; and Vår is caught between the love and desire she has for her husband and the freedom he allows, and the near animalistic passion she experiences only with The Lover.

But then, jealousy. And things end with The Lover.

“The Lover and I . . . We could never get enough. It was on the border of cannibalism . . . I really loved him, I truly did, I almost sacrificed Lou. But then it turned out to be wrong after all. Because now it’s over. Now I feel something else, less painful, safer . . . Friendship.”

The Lover remains a constant in the background, throughout the rest of the novel, sometimes as the friend Vår wants to talk with late at night, the love she hasn’t really “gotten over” (one of the best lines in the book is “nostalgia doesn’t mean anything other than what used to be is over, and now you wish it could be again”), and as an experiment that maybe went too far—at least for Lou. Which is why he proposes a sort of game, a chance to do it all over again, to find a similar type of freedom, but that this time he’ll be able to handle himself, to deal with the jealousy, to do things right.

Of course, in the present time in the book, Lou has gotten quite involved with Sidney, a young girl who resembles Jane Birkin (R.I.P.), and with whom he takes lots of long walks, pines over, randomly spends nights with, so on and so forth. Which makes Vår jealous.

In her words: “Jealousy is something I have nothing but contempt for, but it still gnaws away inside me. I refuse to be broken.”

So Lou makes a proposal. With a sort of Nietzschean logic he tells Vår that if she falls in love with someone again, like she did with The Lover, he’ll leave Sidney for good.

Enter The American. A cello player (his cello being the “only woman I’ve never left, and who has never left me,” a line so cheesy that Lou’s mocking groan slightly vindicates him) who lives in Amsterdam, has written a composition called “The Sexual Life of Plants” (another groan) that he’s about to debut, and with whom Vår has an instant, intense connection.

I don’t want to recount this book beat for beat—and to be honest, I’m cherry-picking moments here to try and logically build a sordid situation, whereas the book itself is muddier in a delightful, emotional way with semi-erotic digressions and meditations, and lots of other details rounding out these characters and their love affairs—but I wanted to get to this point, because this is where the masculine jealousy really starts to kick in.

Jealousy is always bad. And masculine jealousy is toxic and frequently dangerous.

Edy Poppy

If what I’ve written so far has you at all interested, you really should read this book for yourself. If you’ve ever felt love for multiple people at once, regret a relationship from the past that went sour or ended, or simply entertained the possibility of a nontraditional arrangement (“I never dreamed of finding the man of my life. I wanted to be independent. Free. Feminist. Lou, on the other hand, always dreamed about finding the woman of his life, even if he didn’t dream that this woman would be me. He wanted to be dependent. Macho. But it didn’t turn out like that.”), this book will raise a lot of questions and bring to light a lot of complicated feelings.

There’s also a pervasive sense of male creep throughout this novel, which the book undermines without being didactic or strident. Occasionally Poppy will be direct and on point, like in this passage:

“I mean that you should go to Amsterdam, Vår, that you should see, smell, feel, and let yourself be ‘fertilized’ . . .” says Lou and mocks me with the American’s cliché. “That you should take a chance. And if it goes to hell, if it goes the way I want it to . . . then I’ll take you back.” [Emphasis mine.]

But oftentimes the creep is just lurking, there in the background, in the form of phone calls and questions, and a latent desire to control the narrative . . . which all leads to a surprise (in part because it is not physically violent) resolution.

*

By contrast with Vår, Elin in has always lived within the bounds of what’s deemed “acceptable.” From the way she deals with her patients (who all test the bounds of her patience in different ways, each expecting the world, a quick and easy solution, without consideration for anyone or anything else), to her cozy life with her husband in a totally pleasant suburban community.

It’s not that she’s “buttoned down,” rather that that’s just the way things are. You work hard, earn a decent salary, live a comfortable life, and enjoy (maybe too much) drinking wine.

And then, almost by accident, she messages her former boyfriend—the one before her husband, the one with jealousy issues—and her life swerves.

At the start of Lykke’s novel, a year has passed since Elin sent that initial message, and a lot has happened. Most notably, ��������’s been having an affair with Bjørn, and more notably, her husband just found out. And unlike Lou from Anatomy. Monotony., he’s not about to entertain the possibility of any sort of “open” relationship.

What follows are essentially two plotlines: one recounting the development of the affair with Bjørn, the joy and freedom and hope and peace it brings to ��������’s life, the other a micro-analysis of her day at the clinic and all the stresses and impossible requests the average person makes of doctors and science in today’s day and age.

These intersect and bounce off one another, and equally held my interest, but for the sake of this particular piece, the affair is the only one I really want to write about.

In this instance, the jealousy displayed isn’t necessarily as tinged with destructiveness—or at least that isn’t the primary focus when it comes to Aksel, ��������’s husband—instead it plays as a sort of selfish narcissism, an inability on her husband’s part to understand ��������’s needs and desires. (“Aksel might have wanted the same thing that I did, that we would get over this crisis and grow from it and keep the home fire and the hearth fire and the daily fire burning, but none of that helped as long as other parts of him did not agree. And since these other parts of him were the parts that determined the basic functions, he was unable to sleep as long as I was next to him in the bed.”) And that’s just as hurtful, and just as disappointing. Especially since Elin sees the vibrancy gained through her relationship with Bjørn as a potential ��Dz����پ�������for her relationship with her husband.

And yet, quite clearly, and with my full consciousness, I noticed how quickly the normal, ordinary version of myself was replaced by this being who must have been asleep inside of me, and who behaved contrary to all of the things I’d said and believed up to that point.

Early on I began thinking in this way: What if I can take this energy and joy which I’ve found, all of this secretiveness and excitement, everything that’s welling up inside me, and which makes me have less desire for drinking wine and watching TV and everything else that I used to chew and drink and swallow in order to soothe and calm myself—what if this could give me and Aksel a new life?

By applying a kind of controlled and intelligently designed alchemy, the illegal would become legal, the dirty would become pure, and the painful would transform into something edifying. The end would sanctify the means, and all of this goodness, this wonderfulness, the delectable, the forbidden, would be permitted to go on and on and on, for eternity.

Nina Lykke

I’m not going to use this (very small) platform to promote cheating on your spouse, or necessarily embracing an open relationship—which isn’t for everyone, and can be tricky even for those who are into it—but it’s not unusual to reach a certain age and, despite the quality of your relationships, feel like there might be something more. Not necessarily a Grand Love Affair, or a Passion for the Ages, but a connection that is invigorating. Life is simultaneously very short and very long, and confining a person’s ability to love and experience—especially the way men have traditionally restricted their wives—feels so small and petty and limited.

And although neither of these books offer any direct solution to this age-old issue, they both wrestle with the complexities and paradoxes of love and freedom in ways that will definitely resonate with a wide swathe of readers—male and female, jealous or supportive.

*

To return to Anatomy. Monotony. for one second, with that idea of complexity and paradox in mind, it’s worth thinking about the way in which Vår is writing what is essentially autofiction inside of Poppy’s novel that, well, reads like autofiction.

The book is dedicated to: “my husband, who has given me everything, even what I didn’t want. (He is now my ex-husband).”

And ends with the Fresán-esque disclaimer: “P.S.: Everything I’ve written is true apart from what I’ve invented.”

Finally, there’s this quote from Vår that’s right at the heart of desire’s contradictions: “I answer that to miss me is wrong. That to miss me is the same as wasting time. A lot. If he can’t forget me. I close my eyes and I suppose that deep down, that’s what I hope. That I’m unforgettable.”

Back in the first post of July—Norwegian Literature Month at Three Percent, because nothing reminds me more of Norway than a 110 degree heat index—I shared a bunch of statistics on Norwegian literature in English from 2008 through 2018. Including this:

This is the breakdown of Norwegian books by men (123 titles or 73%) published in English translation compared to those written by women (47 titles or 27%). That’s a����ܲ�����discrepancy! Almost three titles by Norwegian men for every single title by a Norwegian woman? Not a great look.

And because I have the data in front of me, I can list all 21—only twenty-one!—Norwegian women who, since 2008, have had work translated into English for the first time ever:

Selma Lonning Aaro

May-Brit Akerholt

Merete Andersen

Brit Bildoen

Hanne Bramness

Gro Dahle

Janne Drangsholt

Karin Fossum

Kari Hesthamar

Vigdis Hjorth

Anne Holt

Merethe Lindstrom

Maja Lunde

Hanne Orstavik

Gunnhild Oyehaug

Edy Poppy

Agnes Ravatn

Ingelin Rossland

Kjersti Skomsvold

Amalie Skram

Linn Ullmann

Compared to a number of other countries, that’s not bad, but aside from the mystery writers—Karin Fossum and Anne Holt in particular—and the one(?) Big Five author (Gunnhild Oyehaug), I’m curious to see how many of these other authors are easy to find out about online.

Let’s back up for a second first.

*

Shortly after putting together a really ambitious plan for Norwegian Month—and a to-do list that’s longer than a Texas mile—I took a kind of selfish “work” vacation. I went to an AirBNB alone (a place with no TV and no Internet) to work on a book idea I had (er, have, I suppose) about, well, baseball and framing and stuff. The vision I have makes no sense when I explain it, no matter how valiantly I try, but, in essence I want to write about non-quantifiable value at a time when everything is being quantified and analyzed.

The biggest problem I’m having—aside from a near-constant state of self-deprecation, especially when I think that these posts can serve as some sort of “proof of concept” behind my whole insane book idea—is that writing about value mostly means writing about failure. And when I’m writing about failure—in a book that’s at least partially autobiographical—I’m really just pondering my own failures. And how my life/career/ideas/editorial selections stack up against others. Definitely not well!

Anyway, putting aside that moment of self-doubt (fuck self-doubt! fuck aspiration! fuck ego! and fuuuucccckkkk Twitter!), my other big plan for my time away was to read a couple books by Norwegian women—the two that are referenced below—and prep some posts for Three Percent.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, I discovered Shirley Jackson, aka, one of my five most favorite authors ever of all time.

This started by downloading���Ჹ�Բ�������������for my Kindle before taking off to the AirBNB. (And please, come at me if you want. If you work at an indie bookstore between Rochester and Great Barrington, MA and had a copy of �Ჹ�Բ�������������in stock, please send a picture. It wasn’t available in the central library here, nor in the U of R one, and, to be honest, there is something rewarding about being able to read in the dark, on a roof, well into the wee hours of the morning.)��Hangsaman came up in a marketing meeting about Sara Mesa’s Four by Four, as a suggestion from one of our summer interns as a possible comparison, and as a voice that might help with editing this strange, captivating book.

(Side note: Four by Four is AMAZING. It’s the sort of book that gets stuck in your mind, forcing you to puzzle it all out. And dwell on it. The editing process has been incredibly illuminating for this title. We’re taking the translation to a new level.��Just wait, y’all. Just wait.)

Everyone who went to high school already knows of Shirley Jackson. She’s the author of “The Lottery,” which, because bold claims are the thing in 2019, I’m going to state, emphatically, with no qualifications or any hand-wringing, that this is��the Greatest American Short Story Ever. We all know it. It caused a bit of controversy. It’s layered. It’s immaculately well-crafted. It’s singular in its voice. And it’s not by Hemingway. (Big plus.)

Everyone who watches Netflix knows about��The Haunting of Hill House, which is pretty much not at all related to the Jackson novel of the same name—but who cares? Lots of people watched this. “Inspired by” is the new “adapted from.”

And some people know��We Have Always Lived in This Castle, which I first heard about and read in 2008 when Bragi Ólafsson recommended it during his reading tour here in the States. When the aforementioned intern recommended Jackson as a possible comparison point for Sara Mesa’s novel, this was the book I thought of. A novel with a weird interplay between voice and perspective, plot and narrative framing.

I didn’t want to reread that, though, which then led to my finding out that Jackson had written four novels I’d never heard of:��The Road through the Wall,��Hangsaman, The Bird’s Nest, and��The Sundial.��

I have no doubts that some readers of this website have read some/most/all of these books, but for whatever reason—because of “The Lottery”?, because she’s a she?, because her books are supposedly “genre”?—Jackson flew under my radar.

Looking at her earlier books,���Ჹ�Բ�������������jumped out. A book about a school (like��Four by Four) that’s both sinister and a parody (again,��Four by Four), and a lesser known book from a famous author (I am a total mark for being “that guy who read the book by XXXX that no one else ever reads”), sounded ideal to me.

In fits and starts, as I worked on my book (aka came to terms with several of my limitations as a writer and thinker), I read Hangsaman. And when I finished, I had two thoughts:��What the fuck did I just read? Who else has written about the connections between this book and��Twin Peaks?��

*

The first book I planned on reading on my little write-a-cation (I’ll let myself out) was Anatomy. Monotony.��because the description sounded so very horny. (FYI: . Can someone let me know what’s going on? Anyone?)

What is fidelity? In��Anatomy. Monotony., Edy Poppy examines this question with an intimacy and ruthlessness worthy of Marguerite Duras. Vår, a young woman from a small Norwegian town, and Lou, a Frenchman from Nîmes, maintain an open marriage. But their polyamorous experiment is freighted with jealousies. Their life in London is broken into by one fascinating stranger after another, until eventually they decide to move away, back to Vår’s rural hometown―a decision that will change the nature of their relationship forever.��Anatomy. Monotony.��is a novel about sex, love, and the creation of literature in no uncertain terms.

Admittedly, I’m not digging too deeply into my Google results, but at first glance, there seems to be almost no conversation whatsoever of this book. “too personal, too forced,” and , but wins, due to this opening paragraph:

I have lived with the novel Anatomy. Monotony. for the entire 19 years of my real-life story with its author, Edy Poppy. I’ve known its players, the inside story – from her first notes in the galleries of Tate in London. Now I have a chance to read it. Dare I?

Oh, shit!

*

The first result I got for “what does Hangsaman by Shirley jackson mean?” was a GoodReads page that was basically a cold, objective evaluation: With a grand total of 9 ratings, the book had received a 3.22 rating.

NOT A SIDE NOTE: What is a small sample size for book review ratings? In baseball, 600 plate appearances is �����ٳٲ���valid. No trends stabilize before 100 plate appearances. But off of 9 GoodReads ratings this book is mediocre.

This book is definitely not a 3.22 out of 5.00. That’s like giving a C to a student because you’re too dumb to notice they know more than you. But who’s going to go on there and try and change that score? What are we doing, rating books in this way?

*

Vigdis Hjorth is a big name in Norwegian literature. Her novel��Will and Testament (forthcoming from Verso) sold like, if I can remember the number from the press release I threw away, like 140,000 units.

Open Letter��has sold more than 120,000 net units over our history. That’s not a failure. I don’t think? It’s not. No way. Success isn’t only sales figures. Right?

Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret.

When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different—a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.

Will and Testament��is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman’s struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth’s novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.

I did read a bit of this book. My hot takeaway: It’s worth checking out, but the most interesting part of the first 60 pages is about the narrator having an affair with a married man. The most boring parts are all the whining about the summer houses and the inheritance. It’s very repetitive. But I assume it becomes more and more interesting as it goes along. In Verso I trust. They are not failures. Every editorial decision they make is lauded.

That said,��Will and Testament��is no��The Sundial��by Shirley Jackson, which I immediately downloaded after finishing �Ჹ�Բ�������������(although, in all fairness, I did go to the local independent bookstore, , and bought the only Jackson book they had in stock, a Netflix tie-in version of��The Haunting of Hill House), and ended up devouring over the course of a single day.

*

All clickbait headlines are awful, but this one really bugs me: ““

I’ve spent the week so far reading mid-century-style: pocket paperbacks and folded pages, making notes in the margins with ballpoint pens. When I finish Shirley Jackson’s 1951 novel Hangsaman��today, though, I immediately head to the 21^st century—I take out my phone and start Googling furiously.

What else would you do? Everything you can imagine exists online somewhere, so, obviously, someone must have tried to articulate this weird novel. Go on, Dan Kois, editor of��Slate:

“Natalie is lonely at school. And because of who she is, and because of what kind of novel this is, her loneliness is terrifying. The dangerous power of awareness, quotidian social brutality, loneliness, and existential fear propel��Hangsaman��toward the edge of becoming a psychological thriller, rather like one of Patricia Highsmith’s, only less physically violent, funnier, more lyrical, imaginative, and interior.”

At the very least I’m reassured that I didn’t miss some enormous plot point. Instead, I’m left with the thoroughly enjoyable activity of chewing over the book I’ve just read: thinking back on Natalie’s voices, her diaries, her puffed-up father and desperate mother, the man at the party, the one-armed diner and the best friend, only some of whom, it’s clear, actually exist.

Just to clarify, Dan quotes Francine Prose’s intro, and then reassures himself that his (unarticulated) reading of the book wasn’t 100% off-base.

It would take many more paragraphs to address even half of the interesting things you can find in this book. Questions or observations like:

1.) Natalie was sexually assaulted, right?

2.) What an amazing parody of a domineering father . . .

3.) . . . AND of a man who thinks he’s a writer.

4.) Those letters home from college.

5.) The history of that college (Bennington?) is so wonderful in its specificity.

6.) And that ending? Let’s assume Tony isn’t real. Natalie still has��very uncanny experiences��with several adults in the last third of the book.

7.) Including the very unnerving car ride back to town, which seems to take place at a very different point in time.

9.) And don’t forget about the 0ne-armed man!

But is any of this addressed in the only contemporary review of this book? Nope! The rest of his review is this:

My hunch is that the establishment of the trade paperback as an exciting format for lit-fiction—cemented by the��, launched in 1984 and a fabulous success almost instantly thanks to Jay McInerney’s��—meant that suddenly every author wanted a large-format paperback edition for herself. They also cost more: more money for publishers, higher royalties to authors. So where once most trade paperbacks��, that format now became a way to differentiate high-toned fiction from its pulpier, poppier, mass-market brethren. The bet was that readers would pay for quality. For a while, they did.

Now, of course, the only thing I’m willing to pay for is speed. I spent $8.89 to download a book in seconds, even though it’s just data, words on a screen, more ephemeral even than the shabby mass-market tucked into the cupholder of my beach chair. Fifty years from now��Hangsaman��will be over 100 years old, and this little object that once sold for 50 cents may well still survive—in my daughter’s house, or in a thrift shop somewhere, or on the shelves of some other mass-market fetishist like me, carefully tending the last remaining treasures in his collection. That $9 Kindle version will be long evaporated into the ether, just another obsolete file format, more orphaned data lost in the dark where no one will ever find it.

Wait, what?

*

Every Shirley Jackson book I’ve read has a moment when the main character gets lost in the woods and has some sort of vision that’s maybe real, maybe in their (broken) mind, possibly supernatural. Someone ���ܲ�����be talking about this. Somewhere.

*

Where does discussion of the���Դdz�-���𲵲�-��DZ�ܱ�������books take place nowadays?

This is something I want to include in my aforementioned book in progress—or on a podcast, or something—but the democratization of book culture via the Internet has only really reinforced the gap between immense success and being completely ignored. A book is only going to be talked about in detail if���𱹱����DzԱ���is talking about it. It’s very rare to see someone going out on a limb and talking up a book that others haven’t already anointed. Or that isn’t positioned to be “the next big thing.”

Which will always strike me as weird, since I grew up at a time when everyone was desperately trying to set themselves apart through their choices of which bands, authors, movies, etc. Never admit to liking a book that���Դǰ�����������really like.

I don’t feel like that’s the vibe anymore, although maybe I’m just wrong. Twitter is probably���Դdz���the best way of assessing culture at large.

*

The only other thing I could find online about Hangsaman was on . Initially, this made me feel hopeful. It would make sense for conversations about more obscure books to happen here. But then, this:

This is going back to the old point that I’ve written about (and podcasted about) a million times, but the most pressing issue for the field of international literature��������’����increasing the infamous 3% number, it’s cultivating conversations around the books that����������published. Of the 600+ translations published last year, there were probably a dozen that received a respectable amount of attention from reviewers, literary websites, booksellers, Twitter, and the like, with the overwhelming majority of international titles (and, to be honest, most books in general), just fading away.

None of this is new, or insightful. But if you start to unpack���ɳ����certain books receive 90% of the conversation, and others get absolutely nothing . . . That’s interesting. Even a bit disconcerting if you accept that it’s not the������������ǰ���most worthy��titles that get the attention, that there are other forces at work, shaping our culture. (Shadowy forces and luck. It’s always all about luck.)

So it’s not surprising that it’s hard to find people talking about��Will and Testament��(hopefully that will change when the book is officially released) and��Anatomy. Monotony.��I’m not sure there’s anything to be done, but I’m becoming more and more despondent about a culture that seems to only value the mega-hit. Twitter broke me this week when, after not checking it for days and days, I opened up the app and saw every silly tweet as someone’s attempt to go viral. Just keep chucking out those puns and witty observations and one day you’ll make it!��Like trying to understand YouTubers, this really bums me out. We don’t see value in the object itself, but rather in the number of references and likes that object has received. And since most people, especially nowadays, want to be part of the in crowd, once something starts to be popular, we all rush to like and retweet it, to make sure that we can demonstrate that we know what’s good.

*

�Ჹ�Բ�������������is a fantastic book. And��The Haunting of Hill House is exquisitely crafted. But, in the end, my favorite Shirley Jackson novel is The Sundial. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, a sort of comedy of manners set against a somewhat sinister backdrop. The Victor LaValle foreword (posted on����as a “book review,” which is odd) does a great job articulating what makes her book so damn good:

The Hallorans, and their extended hangers-on, become a kind of cult when one of them, Aunt Fanny, receives prophetic messages from her long departed, much revered father. He has appeared to his only daughter to warn that the world is soon to end. All those in the Halloran home must prepare for the coming doom. Shut the doors and windows, close themselves off from the cursed world. Prepare to become the last of the human race. In quick time the family members are drawn into paranoia and conspiracy. They come to believe the prophecy. They have been chosen to inherit the earth. Jackson proceeds to illustrate, in rich detail, just how sad such a fate would be. The whole world ends, and��this��is all that’s left? Jackson spares no one her precise, perceptive eye. Sadder still is how much I recognize myself, from my worst moments, in one character or another. What saves me from despair is Jackson’s wit, her deadpan demolition of human foibles. For me, that kind of reading experience is essential, and when I discovered Shirley Jackson, it was as if she’d understood what I wanted, what I needed, and set it all down on the page long before I was even born. That recognition is profound, life changing, whether it comes in a darkened movie theater or between the covers of a novel.

Personally, I love the way Aunt Fanny keeps trying to get in bed with one of the hangers-on by pounding on his door and insisting that she’s “only 48” and therefore, still desirable. That and how the granddaughter keeps questioning whether or not the post-apocalyptic world, in which everyone outside of the house has simply vanished, is actually a good thing, since they’ll all still be stuck with one another . . . Oh, and the set-piece where the Halloran Cult meets the True Believers, who share their own vision of the coming end of the world—a vision that the Hallorans find absolutely ridiculous. (I don’t want to give away any more of that scene though . . . Those few pages alone are worth the price of admission.)