THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON

Narrator Kirsten Potter portrays vibrant, funny, fierce Shirley Jackson in this collection of letters from her college years until the week before she died of a heart attack at age 48. Written with scant punctuation and no capital letters, the letters are a pell-mell experience, which Potter channels without seeming to rush. She times Jackson's protean wit with skill and subtly deepens her voice to match the writer's increasing age and illnesses. Jackson's letters frequently served as practice drafts for the many comical articles on family life that she wrote for women's magazines. The psychological darkness and pain that engendered such famous works as THE LOTTERY and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE only creeps out occasionally, and when it does, it's ferocious. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2021]