Shirley: A Novel
Jun 2014 · Sold by Penguin
3.0star
2 reviews
Ebook
288
Pages
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About this ebook
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ELIZABETH MOSS AND MICHAEL STUHLBARG!
“Susan Scarf Merrell brilliantly weaves events from Shirley Jackson’s life into a hypnotic story line”* in this darkly thrilling novel about the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery.
Two imposing literary figures are at the heart of this captivating novel: celebrated author Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic and professor at Bennington College. When a young graduate student and his pregnant wife—Fred and Rose Nemser—move into Shirley and Stanley’s home in the fall of 1964, they quickly fall under the magnetic spell of their brilliant and unconventional hosts.
While Fred becomes preoccupied with his teaching schedule, Rose forms an unlikely, turbulent friendship with the troubled and unpredictable Shirley. Fascinated by the Hymans’ volatile marriage and inexplicable drawn to the darkly enigmatic author, Rose nonetheless senses something amiss—something to do with nightly unanswered phone calls and inscrutable accounts of a long-missing female student. Chillingly atmospheric and evocative of Jackson’s own classic stories, Shirley is an elegant thriller with one of America’s greatest horror writers at its heart.
*The Washington Post
“Susan Scarf Merrell brilliantly weaves events from Shirley Jackson’s life into a hypnotic story line”* in this darkly thrilling novel about the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery.
Two imposing literary figures are at the heart of this captivating novel: celebrated author Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic and professor at Bennington College. When a young graduate student and his pregnant wife—Fred and Rose Nemser—move into Shirley and Stanley’s home in the fall of 1964, they quickly fall under the magnetic spell of their brilliant and unconventional hosts.
While Fred becomes preoccupied with his teaching schedule, Rose forms an unlikely, turbulent friendship with the troubled and unpredictable Shirley. Fascinated by the Hymans’ volatile marriage and inexplicable drawn to the darkly enigmatic author, Rose nonetheless senses something amiss—something to do with nightly unanswered phone calls and inscrutable accounts of a long-missing female student. Chillingly atmospheric and evocative of Jackson’s own classic stories, Shirley is an elegant thriller with one of America’s greatest horror writers at its heart.
*The Washington Post
Ratings and reviews
3.0
2 reviews
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November 25, 2014
This book had the optimistic start of a mystery and a modern gothic haunted house, and she seemed to lose interest or simply forgot the plot.It was a big waste of a night of reading for no matter how much a novel sucks I usually finish it once started.
About the author
Susan Scarf Merrell is the author of Shirley: A Novel, now a major motion picture starring Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg. She is also the author of A Member of the Family and The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships. She co-directs the Southampton Writers Conference, is program director (along with Meg Wolitzer) of the novel incubator program BookEnds, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She served as fiction editor of The Southampton Review. Essays, book reviews and short fiction appear most recently in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Common Online, The Washington Post, and East Magazine.
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