[quote name='Liquid 2']I'll definitely grab that next time I swing by the library.
Would you describe that Shirley Jackson story as emotionally brutal? I've had similar reactions to two movies that can be described as such: Oldboy and Requiem for a Dream.
edit: I'll look into your suggestion too, Ackbar.[/QUOTE]
Jackson was all about misdirection in her stuff. Complete and total misdirection.
I wouldn't call it emotionally brutal.
What she tends to do is leave a bunch of clues and vague details, and at the end, doesn't sew them all back together. But they've already gotten underneath your skin by that time - you can't really let them go. And yet, you have nothing you can adequately do to resolve them.
What happens is that you'll start thinking about passages and sentences and what was in them, and start questioning what is real, what isn't real, is it all real, is none of it real, does this contradict that, etc.
You'll start debating with yourself endlessly about what you can and cannot believe, and this is even without someone else next to you to discuss it with. It's just total oblivion in your head after a while.
The short story in it (I forget the title) is kind of like a sampling of one of her novels - The Haunting of Hill House. Ignore any movies with this title or similar titles, as they tend to be pretty bad renditions.
In a way, it's all really...beautiful. And yet, it's so strangely horrific. You end up not being able to discern exactly why it's bothering you so much. You just know that it does.
The course I took with that book had a professor who was all about Gothic writing, and especially liked Jackson as well. The word he used was liminal. We've all heard of the word subliminal, which is a message or idea that tends to go into our subconscious, and we don't know we're thinking about it until some period after it's intruded within.
Liminal is sort of the start of conscious understanding right before that. Basically, it's when you reach the threshold of determining what is real and what is not.
The problem, of course, is that once you reach that state, you aren't able to honestly trust yourself anymore. Your senses, your thoughts. It's all being adversely altered in such a way that any sense of internal logic you have can't be followed, because you might already be gone.
Jackson works best in that manner, and is best described in that manner. You're simply gone before you know it, and you have no way of bringing yourself back.