Where to Start With Shirley Jackson If You’ve Only Read “The Lottery”

If you’ve only read “The Lottery,” start with We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Shirley Jackson’s short novel about two sisters living on the edge of a hostile village brings back the feeling that everyone in town knows the rules and a few people are made to pay for them. If you’d rather spend another evening with her short fiction, start with “The Daemon Lover.” If you came looking for a haunted house, go straight to The Haunting of Hill House.

“The Lottery” first appeared in The New Yorker’s June 26, 1948, issue. The opening gives you children gathering stones and adults talking about ordinary things. It takes time for the connection between those details to become clear. The books below each pick up a different part of that experience, from the pressure of belonging to the moment an ordinary gesture starts to feel threatening.

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Which Shirley Jackson book should you read next?

Start with We Have Always Lived in the Castle for small-town menace

Merricat Blackwood lives with her sister Constance and their Uncle Julian after a poisoning killed several members of the family. Trips into the village bring Merricat face to face with people who still talk about the deaths. At home, she has rituals of her own, including burying objects and fastening things to trees. Then Cousin Charles arrives, and even the routines that make the house feel safe to her start to give way.

The distance between the sisters’ house and the village is what makes this my first pick. In “The Lottery,” Jackson lets us watch a community carry out its rituals. In Castle, we hear from someone who has her own ideas about what keeps danger away. The village thinks it knows the Blackwoods, and Merricat thinks she understands the village. Spending the book in her company makes both judgments feel less certain. It also makes for a good reread. Once you know the family’s story, listen to how casually Merricat decides which details are worth telling you.

Find We Have Always Lived in the Castle on Amazon. if you want the novel that comes closest to the social unease of “The Lottery.”

Read The Lottery and Other Stories for more short fiction

You can read the title story again in the collection, but give “The Daemon Lover” the first slot. A woman goes looking for her fiancé when he fails to arrive on their wedding day. The search takes her through a city full of people who can offer just enough information to send her somewhere else. Pay attention to how often someone sounds helpful and how little the encounter actually settles.

Then read “Charles.” A kindergartner comes home with stories about a boy who misbehaves at school, and his parents begin looking forward to the reports. It’s a funny, quick story that makes a good companion to “The Daemon Lover.” One keeps you wondering how much the people a woman encounters really know. The other invites you to ask how readily a family accepts a story it enjoys hearing.

Find The Lottery and Other Stories on Amazon to read both stories alongside “The Lottery.”

Choose The Haunting of Hill House for a ghost story

Dr. Montague brings a small group to Hill House to investigate reports of a haunting. Among them is Eleanor Vance, who has spent years caring for her mother and is eager to get away. The group’s early conversations can be surprisingly playful. Watch how quickly it matters to Eleanor whether the others include her in a joke. By the time the house begins to frighten her, you already have a reason to care whether she wants to leave.

Read this first if the suspense of “The Lottery” was what stayed with you. Jackson again makes ordinary exchanges worth studying, and here she gives you a house whose noises and rooms can make you question what just happened. Once you’ve finished, read our The Haunting of Hill House ending explained.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143039989?tag=booksofbrill-20&#8243; rel=”sponsored”>Find <em>The Haunting of Hill House</em> on Amazon</a> if you want to start with Jackson’s haunted-house novel.

Try The Sundial for Jackson’s dark comedy

After a funeral brings the Hallorans together, Aunt Fanny has a vision that the world will end and that those at the family mansion will survive. Once the household begins to prepare, questions about who gets to stay carry a new urgency. Jackson lets the family bring its existing rivalries into the preparations. The thought that civilization might end does remarkably little to change how these people treat one another.

This is the one I’d save for after Castle. In “The Lottery,” the villagers’ matter-of-fact attitude makes their ritual disturbing. In The Sundial, a family’s ability to turn a prophecy into a series of household decisions is often very funny. The jokes get sharper as it becomes clear who expects to inherit the world.

Find The Sundial on Amazon if you’d like your next Shirley Jackson novel to be a satire.

Should you read Shirley Jackson’s books in order?

You can start with any of these stand-alone books. My suggested route is We Have Always Lived in the Castle, then “The Daemon Lover” and “Charles” from The Lottery and Other Stories, then The Haunting of Hill House. Save The Sundial for when you’re ready to see how funny Jackson can be about people under pressure.

Keep reading 7 Classic Novels Where the House Holds the Secret

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