Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson

This biography--the first ever written about her--turns to her works, her family, her firends toanswer the question: Who was Shirly Jackson? *The "queen of macabre:, a dark presence whose chilling short story about ritualized evil in a small New England town has become required reading for just about every schoolchild in America. *An exuberant humorist whose tales of family life in a big old Vermont house filled with four children, a professor-critic husband, one dog and countless cats continue to warm readers' hearts. *A serious apprentice of magic who practiced curses on her enemies with homemade voodoo dolls and claimed to communicate with the supernatural. *A warm, gracious hostess who, with her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, presided over lively dinner parties, and whose home was always open to such friends and colleagues as Howard Nemerov, Walter Bernstein, Raplh Ellison, Dylan Thomas, Bernard Malamud. *A sad victim of her own excesses--eating, drinking, smoking, even working--who was riddled with fear about everything, especially people. The answer: All of the above. Judy Oppenheimer digs beneath the surface of these apparent contradictions to discover the real Shirley Jackson: psychic visionary and casserole cook, suburband mother and prolific novelist. Private Demons is a penetrating analysis of the woman inside the author, and the genius inside the housewife.