The Lottery and Other Stories

and Other Stories

Hardcover, 292 pages

English language

Published Jan. 24, 2000 by The Modern Library.

OCLC Number:
606293217

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(4 reviews)

A haunting and powerful collection of stories from one of America's finest writers, with a new Introduction by Patrick McGrath.

Eerie, unforgettable, and by turns terrifying and hilarious, Shirley Jackson's collection of stories plunges us into a unique, brilliantly etched world where the uncanny lurks in the everyday and where nothing is quite what it seems. In "The Lottery," Jackson's most famous work and one of the greatest--and scariest--stories of the twentieth century, a small town gathers for an annual ritual that culminates in a terrible event. In "The Daemon Lover," a woman waits, then searches, for the man she is to marry that day, only to find that he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed. In "Trial by Combat," a shy woman confronts her kleptomaniac neighbor, and in "Pillar of Salt," a tourist in New York is gradually paralyzed by a city grown nightmarish. Throughout …

16 editions

Review of 'Lottery' on 'Goodreads'

I will never understand the mismatch between the cover of this book ("Terrifying and convincing! The most eerie and haunting work of fiction of our time... A gem of Satanic shock" etc.) and the subtle, exquisite stories in this collection. I wouldn't call them horror/macabre at all, not even The Lottery... but what they are is wonderfully evocative -- of the experience of anxiety, subtle wrongnesses, the cruelty of cultural norms and the angst of living in the modern world.

I love her for capturing so skillfully the inner worlds of her characters.

My favorite is "Pillar of Salt", for its pitch-perfect detail of the gradual buildup of anxiety and how that feeling can make small, everyday tasks insurmountable.

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Subjects

  • Horror tales, American.