The Shirley Jackson Mystery.

I’ve had internet problems again today. Twenty minutes of attempted solutions failed to remedy the matter and I thought I was gong to have to engage with the agonising prospect of trying to contact BT again. Fortunately, I restarted the computer as a last resort and the internet came back. Is that encouraging or worrying? I don’t know. In any event, now I can make the post I’ve been wanting to make since yesterday, so here it is:

I want to say a brief word about Shirley Jackson who has become one of my favourite writers. Everything I’ve read about her has been united in seeing her literature as belonging to the mystery/horror genre, and her work routinely described as ‘gothic.’ I’ve even seen her absurdly – in my view – described as following the tradition of Poe, and I don’t for the life of me understand why.

I’ve read five of Jackson’s six novels and greatly enjoyed them. (I didn’t read the first of them because the synopsis suggested it was all about suburban politics, and suburban politics are not my style.) I’ve also read a fairly comprehensive anthology of her short stories. One of her novels, The Haunting of Hill House, is, to my perception, the only one which fits the category universally applied to her. It is unquestionably gothic and fairly well loaded with mystery and horror. But the rest?

There are slight hints of all these appellations in other works, but they are infrequent and often combined with a dry sense of humour, itself a rare component in the horror genre. What I see and relate to in Shirley Jackson are various forms of neurodivergence in female MCs, and especially the sparkles and misapprehensions which ensue when the neurodivergent heroine comes into contact with the world of neuro-normals. It’s all psychological observation related back to the reader in great detail and quite brilliantly. Her plots are pegs on which to hang this observation and there is very little in them which might be described as mysterious, horrific or gothic.

So what on earth is going on here? Is my own neurodivergent tendency shining a light on just one aspect of interest and leaving the rest in darkness? Are all the critics, editors, and bookworms right and am I the one in the wrong? Is that it? I wish I knew. Meanwhile, I’m well into my second reading of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and getting more from it than I did the first time. Good enough, I suppose.