Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Reviews

"... lively and authoritative new biography." — The Economist

"This new biography... could not be more welcome or timely... Her [Ruth Franklin's] critical grasp of Jackson's oeuvre is superlative and you do not doubt a word she says: this is most definitely an exhaustive biography." — Julie Myerson, The Spectator

"Franklin has gained access to a trove of new material including a fascinating correspondence between Jackson and a housewife fan in the early 1960s. Our sense of there being "two Shirleys" is not encouraged by the author, who makes a convincing case for seeing the two personas instead as "profoundly interconnected"." — The Times Literary Supplement

"Franklin’s masterful biography, deeply researched and warmly sympathetic to its subject, paints a different picture, successfully marrying the various elements of Jackson’s personality – writer and homemaker, gifted literary author and popular mummy-blogger memoirist." — Literary Review

"... sympathetic and fair-minded biography…" — The Guardian

"Franklin... gives equal weight to Jackson’s life and work in this groundbreaking new biography." — Jane Ciabattari, The 10 Best Books of 2016, BBC Culture

"...Ruth Franklin skilfully and with great verve and readability paints a portrait of a woman with many faces in this slick and stylish biography." — The Mail on Sunday

"Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is a richly satisfying biography: capacious, incisive, and full of surprising insights into the legacy of this “Virginia Werewolf among the séance-fiction writers” (as a short-sighted mid-century writer once dubbed her)." — Kate Bolick, Our Favourite Books of 2016, The Irish Times

"... enjoyable biography..." — Dan Jones, The Times

"In her biography...Ruth Franklin plays down the broomstick tag and skilfully unpicks the threads of Jackson's life and works." — The Arts Desk

"... gloriously comprehensive book." — SciFi Now

"... a wonderful, intriguing, warmhearted biography of the author of The Lottery. Franklin, like her subject, is just so darned readable..." — The Bookseller

"This is a skilled and deeply researched portrait of a curious woman and accomplished writer who retains the power to torment and unsettle readers..." — The Times

"Franklin’s biography looks at the inner darkness that fuelled a unique literary talent." — The Telegraph

"For many readers, Jackson is the best of all horror writers, a master of tension and unravelling sanity. In the biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin unravels some of the myths that surrounded the writer and also shows us a picture of a life that in some ways contains many of the things Jackson was writing about. Plagued with a fear of the outside world and an obsessive, panicked need to write, Jackson at times appears as one of her own characters – paranoid, compulsive, afraid." — Daisy Johnson, Further Reading: Horror Books, The Guardian