Ah, the joys and miseries of being a mother and wife, not particularly in that order. Shirley Jackson weaves her magic again - stronger this time - painting a picture of a chaotic household with memorable characters that revolve around the funny, interesting, insightful personality that is the author herself.

This reads almost like a sitcom, something that I'd love to watch on TV. There's a sense of nostalgia, a strong feeling of time gone away, of children growing up, of old sticky family photos in that dusty album kept away in a forgotten corner of the house. The charm overflows and keeps getting better as the book nears the end.

It was painful to reach the end, knowing I'd never meet Jackson's family again, that this is our final goodbye. And what a goodbye it is! I hope Shirley's having a grand time raising hell wherever she is in the afterlife. ( )

The second of Shirley Jackson's two humorous memoirs about keeping house and raising four kids during the 1950s, this follows directly on from the first volume, Life Among the Savages. I think I liked the first one a bit better, but both are entertaining. Although, man... While the tone here is always light and fluffy, with all Jackson's trials and tribulations and moments of anger or frustration at her difficult and thankless role played for laughs (and often slightly self-deprecating laughs), I found it impossible to read this and not think of the fact that this is the same Shirley Jackson who wrote all those stories about quietly desperate housewives slowly collapsing under the weight of society's expectations. So, while this amused me, I have to say, its main effect on me was to make me feel very, very good about my own life choices, which include not having children and not living in the 1950s. ( )

I've never read any of Shirley Jackson's fiction, as psychological horror doesn't appeal to me in the least, but after reading this memoir of her life raising her four children in the 50's I have a strong suspicion of her source for inspiration.

The book is very, very dated in that "I don't want my husband to find out I just spend $13 at the dress shop this month." kind of way, but given the vogue of shows like Mad Men this is actually a great time to read it. The writing is terse but hilarious; the scene with the mice and the cats and the dogs had me laughing out loud.

My main complaint about the book is its structure. At 300 pages one might be fooled into thinking it's a light breezy read. It's not, at least it wasn't for me. There are only 4 chapters in the entire book and the typeface was smaller than average making it a deceptively meaty read, even while it was entertaining. ( )

This was okay - I'm disappointed that it's the last new-to-me full-length Shirley Jackson book I'll ever read! This is her second memoir of her life keeping a household together as a woman in the 50s; her writing is hilarious and dry and really does give a good picture of what a middle-class "professor's wife" would have experienced...but I feel like I got that and more out of her first memoir, Life Among Savages, and didn't really need the second. The section where she reminisces about her brief yet super intense childhood obsession with making clothespin dolls was worth the whole book, though, so I don't regret reading it! ( )

Due for a re-read of this hilarious classic. ( )