Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics) Paperback – June 6, 2023

Read this book for one reaction: gasping "whaaaaaat!" or perhaps "whaaaaat?" (punctuation varies) after reading the final sentence of every story.Shirley Jackson is the indisputable master of the "whaaaaaat!/?" Some stories end ambiguously, leaving you scrambling back through the pages searching for a clue or alternately racing to open Google to read others' wise analyses. Other stories end completely and absolutely unambiguously, leaving you to question not what actually happened but to wonder how such a terrible ending could come to pass. ("The Lottery," Jackson's most famous tale, falls in the second type.) But no matter if the ending is ambiguous or unambiguous, what I want to emphasize is that Shirley Jackson knows how to end. I have now read dozens of her short stories and one of her novels and I am convinced that I know of no author who finishes every piece with such decisive flourish.It's an incredible skill, knowing how to end something. I often find short stories forgettable. Any novel of 300 pages will indubitably engrave itself in my mind by mere virtue of the hours required to read it. A story of less than 20 pages, however, is at a clear disadvantage. A short story must shock to be memorable. Luckily for us, Jackson has one setting: shock the reader. On the last page, or more often, the last sentence.But her shocking endings are of the mild, ungratuitous variety. Two of my favorite stories--"The Daemon Lover" and "Like Mother Used to Make"--finish with the protagonists questioning their sanity and autonomy. They don't run screaming to mental hospitals; rather, they stay quietly and desperately in their homes, wondering who they are and if this is--if this truly can be--their life, and to me, such an ending is much more powerful than any louder alternative.There is something so mundane to Jackson's writing, which makes the fact that most of the stories are categorized in the horror genre more, well, horrifying. Because it suggests that the quotidian is horror. Jackson is wonderfully aware of the fact that the everyday lives of the normalest of the normal are the most frightening things in the world. No need for ghosts or murderers, everything you need is right there inside of us.For Jackson, horror is the casual racism of a small New England town, the irrepressible distress of a 30 year old unmarried woman searching for a husband, the monotonous daily routine of a department store salesperson, a badly misbehaving child and his oblivious parents, the terrifying anonymity of an individual in a metropolis of millions. In short, horror is real life.These stories have a rare rereadable quality. I know that I will reread this collection for the rest of my life, and at the end of every story for the rest of my life, I will say "whaaaaat!/?"

Expectations can be a massive hindrance to enjoyment of a book. Sometimes those expectations can come from hype or reviews. Other times, though, it can come from preconceived notions of an author’s work. Such was the case with The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson. Even setting aside the iconic title story, my notion of Jackson is someone who can be darkly, wickedly funny (We Have Always Lived in the Castle), psychologically chilling (The Haunting of Hill House), or capable of fascinating insight into human cruelty and pettiness (“The Possibility of Evil”). So I assumed such would apply to this, the one collection of her short fiction published during her lifetime.Instead, what I got was something odd and oblique - stories without an evident point sometimes, stories that feel like they’re building to an event that never comes, stories that feel incomplete or fragmentary. Far from the horror collection that so many blurbs and marketers would have you believe it to be, The Lottery and Other Stories immerses you in Jackson’s world, and gives you some glimpses of her talent, but it can’t help but suffer in comparison to those works I mentioned above.That’s not to say there are no gems here. “The Witch” is a gleefully nasty little tale about a young boy on a train and a conversation with a stranger that goes in a wholly unexpected direction, one that’s all the more chilling for its banality. “Like Mother Used to Make” immerses you in the head of an anxious, controlling man who needs his world just so, and finds himself adrift in the face of a woman he doesn’t know how to handle. “Trial by Combat” finds a battle of wills being played out between two women, each of whom knows a reality that neither wants to acknowledge. One of my favorites, “Pillar of Salt,” follows a young woman in the city as the overwhelming activity slowly breaks her down. Some, like “Seven Types of Ambiguity” and “Elizabeth,” find Jackson depicting perverse, inexplicable acts of cruelty whose purpose may not even be known to those who commit them. Meanwhile, tales like “Colloquy” and “My Life with R.H. Macy” express Jackson’s feeling of disconnection with society and the world around them, while “Flower Garden” and “After You My Dear Alphonse” find her looking at racism both overt and tacit, respectively.But even those stories can’t help but feel a bit odd, especially compared with the tension and unease that Jackson is so capable of creating - and more, it doesn’t touch on stories like “The Intoxicated,” in which a man has a conversation with a girl at a party about the changes in the world, and that’s all. Or “A Fine Old Firm,” where two women whose sons are friends meet and greet each other before the story ends. Stories like these feel like vignettes without much purpose, leaving me unsatisfied and a bit frustrated - especially when compared with the better ones above……and most especially when compared with the juggernaut that is “The Lottery,” justly one of the most famous American short stories of all time, and every bit as good as you remember it. “The Lottery” is what I think of when I think of Jackson - not the story, per se (honestly, Hill House is my go-to Jackson book) - but that mood of suspicion, unease, psychological torment, outsiders, and so much more. “The Lottery” feels like Jackson letting loose, and leaving it to the end of the collection feels right here - it feels like she’s finally cutting loose after holding back for so many stories, and the nightmarish catharsis is almost welcome.In the end, I can’t tell if my disappointment with The Lottery and Other Stories is how little most of the collection fits with my preconceived notions of Jackson, or the stories themselves. As I glance back over the table of contents to write this review, I find myself remembering many of these and liking them more than I felt at the time, and indeed, as they sit, I find myself admiring the craft and technique of many of them. But many feel abrupt and incomplete, leaving you wanting or confused - and more importantly, you can’t help but compare them to Hill House, or Castle, or “The Possibility of Evil,” or even the title story. But to be fair, how much can compare with those?So should you read The Lottery and Other Stories? Probably so - if you’re a fan of Jackson, you’ll want to read it, even if I think you should start with some of the other works mentioned. But be aware that what you’re getting may not be what you expect.