From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is a memorable and terrifying masterpiece, fueled by a tension that creeps up on you slowly without any clear indication of why. This is just a townful of people, after all, choosing their numbers for the annual lottery. What's there to be scared of? The ending is all the more stunning for the social commentary that comes like the slap of a hand and is gone. While The Lottery is probably the darkest story in this collection, the twist, the dig, and the unrelenting insights into human prejudices and frailties are present throughout. Prime targets are self-satisfied matrons, whose racism and elitism are glaringly exposed. Other tales are gentler yet often eerie: a single woman waits expectantly for the man she is to marry that morning, only to find he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed; mild Emily Johnson faces down her kleptomaniac neighbor; Margaret's dream vacation in New York City begins to feel like a nightmare. Sometimes the stories are downright funny, including a hilarious description of working at Macy's, yet even in the humorous pieces, there is an unsettling feeling, like looking in a fun-house mirror where nothing is quite as you expected. This is a collection that will make you think while sending big and little chills down your spine. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

Review
"The stories remind one of the elemental terrors of childhood."--James Hilton, Herald Tribune

"In her art, as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents . . . . She was unique."--Newsweek


Review
"The stories remind one of the elemental terrors of childhood."--James Hilton, Herald Tribune

"In her art, as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents . . . . She was unique."--Newsweek


Book Description
The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jack son's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.


Card catalog description
The people of a village perform their annual lottery, with startling consequences for the recipient of the one paper with the black spot.

ANNOTATION

The people of a village perform their annual lottery, with startling consequences for the recipient of the one paper with the black spot.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 these twenty-five tales, we move through a variety of emotional landscapes full of loneliness and humor, oddity and cruelty, banality and terror, and searing psychological insight. No reader will come away unaffected.
         The only collection to appear during Jackson's lifetime, The Lottery and Other Stories reveals the full breadth and power of this truly original writer.

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