The Road Through the Wall
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Description
Reminiscent of her classic story 'The Lottery', Jackson's disturbing and darkly funny first novel exposes the underside of American suburban life.
'Her books penetrate keenly to the terrible truths which sometimes hide behind comfortable fictions, to the treachery beneath cheery neighborhood faces and the plain manners of country folk; to the threat that sparkles at the rainbow's edge of the sprinkler spray on even the greenest lawns, on the sunniest of midsummer mornings' Donna Tartt
In Pepper Street, an attractive suburban neighbourhood filled with bullies and egotistical bigots, the feelings of the inhabitants are shallow and selfish: what can a neighbour gain from another neighbour, what may be won from a friend? One child stands alone in her goodness: little Caroline Desmond, kind, sweet and gentle, and the pride of her family. But the malice and self-absorption of the people of Pepper Street lead to a terrible event that will destroy the community of which they are so proud. Exposing the murderous cruelty of children, and the blindness and selfishness of adults, Shirley Jackson reveals the ugly truth behind a 'perfect' world.
Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.
'An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman
'Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell' Joyce Carol Oates
'An unburnished exercise in the sinister' The New York Times
Book Information
Posts
The Road Through the Wall carries readers along through the bustle of Pepper Street and all its inhabitants - literally all of them, which lead me to feelings of overwhelm through the first pages. I often lost orientation, mentally jumping from one character to another, wondering who is where and why one should even care, constantly reorienting myself and finding it hard to decide which characters to remember and to follow. Throughout most of the book, Shirley Jackson does not follow a clear plot but rather constructs a mosaic-like portrait of an American street, built from small, incidental moments and finely observed social dynamics. Some may find this approach boring, especially with the image of Jackson as a plot driven horror writer in mind. But, in a way, the "buzziness" of the narrative is part of the appeal, because (when it clicks) it creates the feeling of diving into a living anthill, in which everything is dense and full of tension, without ever being able to fully grasp it. The book’s diegetic flow of information is strikingly idiosyncratic: it often takes unexpected turns, so that one never quite knows why certain things are important and others are not, contributing to the lively, mosaic-like impression. Those who remain patient are repeatedly rewarded with small punchlines, social intrigues, status games, and surprising moments that demonstrate how Jackson uses her characters to construct a sharply focused, almost microscopic portrait of society. Particularly striking, for example, is the character arc of Harriet Merriam, who, under the strict supervision and rules imposed by her mother, becomes increasingly isolated, constantly being look- and fat-shamed, while at the same time she herself starts to enact discrimination, both racist and antisemitic, internalizing and reproducing prejudices, which shows how entangled and complicated systems of discrimination can be, and how much they are shaped by parental influence and social conditioning. She gradually loses all her friendships – a prime example of how Jackson depicts community as something often eroded by expectations, prejudices, pressures to conform, and at the same time as a subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle, mutual exploitative relationship, without ever having to make it explicitly dramatic. These scenes are often narrated laconically, with a hint of sharp humor, sometimes caricatured, sometimes keenly observed, yet always with a sense of the fine tensions that permeate the neighborhood’s everyday life. It is not Jackson’s most immediately accessible book – readers familiar with her later works, such as The Haunting of Hill House, will notice the difference, as those feature more focused characters and a more pointed narrative – but as a first book, it already demonstrates how precise Jackson’s observations of people are, how she illuminates the everyday, and how she reveals social mechanisms with subtle humor and a little bite. For me, it was challenging but equally fascinating, and it is well worth immersing oneself in the small, incidental, often sharply observed scenes that make the book so idiosyncratic and remarkable.
Description
Reminiscent of her classic story 'The Lottery', Jackson's disturbing and darkly funny first novel exposes the underside of American suburban life.
'Her books penetrate keenly to the terrible truths which sometimes hide behind comfortable fictions, to the treachery beneath cheery neighborhood faces and the plain manners of country folk; to the threat that sparkles at the rainbow's edge of the sprinkler spray on even the greenest lawns, on the sunniest of midsummer mornings' Donna Tartt
In Pepper Street, an attractive suburban neighbourhood filled with bullies and egotistical bigots, the feelings of the inhabitants are shallow and selfish: what can a neighbour gain from another neighbour, what may be won from a friend? One child stands alone in her goodness: little Caroline Desmond, kind, sweet and gentle, and the pride of her family. But the malice and self-absorption of the people of Pepper Street lead to a terrible event that will destroy the community of which they are so proud. Exposing the murderous cruelty of children, and the blindness and selfishness of adults, Shirley Jackson reveals the ugly truth behind a 'perfect' world.
Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.
'An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman
'Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell' Joyce Carol Oates
'An unburnished exercise in the sinister' The New York Times
Book Information
Posts
The Road Through the Wall carries readers along through the bustle of Pepper Street and all its inhabitants - literally all of them, which lead me to feelings of overwhelm through the first pages. I often lost orientation, mentally jumping from one character to another, wondering who is where and why one should even care, constantly reorienting myself and finding it hard to decide which characters to remember and to follow. Throughout most of the book, Shirley Jackson does not follow a clear plot but rather constructs a mosaic-like portrait of an American street, built from small, incidental moments and finely observed social dynamics. Some may find this approach boring, especially with the image of Jackson as a plot driven horror writer in mind. But, in a way, the "buzziness" of the narrative is part of the appeal, because (when it clicks) it creates the feeling of diving into a living anthill, in which everything is dense and full of tension, without ever being able to fully grasp it. The book’s diegetic flow of information is strikingly idiosyncratic: it often takes unexpected turns, so that one never quite knows why certain things are important and others are not, contributing to the lively, mosaic-like impression. Those who remain patient are repeatedly rewarded with small punchlines, social intrigues, status games, and surprising moments that demonstrate how Jackson uses her characters to construct a sharply focused, almost microscopic portrait of society. Particularly striking, for example, is the character arc of Harriet Merriam, who, under the strict supervision and rules imposed by her mother, becomes increasingly isolated, constantly being look- and fat-shamed, while at the same time she herself starts to enact discrimination, both racist and antisemitic, internalizing and reproducing prejudices, which shows how entangled and complicated systems of discrimination can be, and how much they are shaped by parental influence and social conditioning. She gradually loses all her friendships – a prime example of how Jackson depicts community as something often eroded by expectations, prejudices, pressures to conform, and at the same time as a subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle, mutual exploitative relationship, without ever having to make it explicitly dramatic. These scenes are often narrated laconically, with a hint of sharp humor, sometimes caricatured, sometimes keenly observed, yet always with a sense of the fine tensions that permeate the neighborhood’s everyday life. It is not Jackson’s most immediately accessible book – readers familiar with her later works, such as The Haunting of Hill House, will notice the difference, as those feature more focused characters and a more pointed narrative – but as a first book, it already demonstrates how precise Jackson’s observations of people are, how she illuminates the everyday, and how she reveals social mechanisms with subtle humor and a little bite. For me, it was challenging but equally fascinating, and it is well worth immersing oneself in the small, incidental, often sharply observed scenes that make the book so idiosyncratic and remarkable.