Dark Tales

absolutely INCREDIBLE. some of the best scary stories i have EVER read (and i promise i have read more scary stories than anyone else you know)

This collection of short stories has reconciled me with this literary genre. Shirley Jackson is a queen of horror, and this one is all the more striking because it operates in the domestic and psychological spheres. What might not seem terrifying at first glance is terrifying when you stop to think about the meaning behind the author's words. The condition of the woman considered (only) as a housewife and wife, that has to be (and stay) young and pretty, that no one wants to hear, and that is stripped of her self, is a real horrific aspect constituting these short stories. I find it remarkable that Jackson highlights the oppression of women in a patriarchal society where they must often crush themselves to meet the needs and expectations of their husbands, or of society itself. In this book, you won't find monsters with fangs or claws, only monsters or tragedies shaped by society...

Some of these stories are a bit confusing, but they all leave you feeling uneasy. Well written and classic.

Deliciously spooky. Don't read them all together like I did, because then they just run together.

while the vibes in this were everything to me and i tore through the first few stories chasing this half-unsettled, half-thrilled rush, i crossed the midway mark fatigued by everything it kept doing to me and found eventually that i just wanted to be freed from the pervasive atmosphere of the collection as a whole. i tried to stagger the stories so i have more time consuming other things in between but at some point i had to decide i’ve been sitting with this book for too long and finished the remaining stories without maybe savouring them much as i could have. which is a shame, bc none of this takes away from the fact that every story had more than a dash of its own quietly unfolding sense of unease and i was very, very much in love.

whatever reservations i have about this book fall entirely on me, and i know short stories from a single author’s whole career aren’t necessarily meant to be consumed in a curated anthology like this one after one after one. none of it changes how shirley jackson might be on the way to being one of my fav writers, if she isn’t already on that list, and i know i’ll see her again very soon.

I liked maybe 3 or 4 of the short stories. I dont really know what I was expecting.

Such an amazing, gripping and definitely a must-read short story collection.

What the heckkkkkk is all I could think after each and every one of these stories! Each tale has a bizarre and tenuous grasp on reality and while I read them so did I! Not really THAT dark but just.... very unsettling in a way I’m apparently unable to describe.

Dark tales indeed—dark and ambiguous and beautifully, charmingly disturbing. Shirley Jackson has proven herself to be a master at finding ways of making the reader's skin crawl with anticipation without actually having to resort to anything gruesome and overtly, plainly horrifying. She creates a heavy atmosphere of what I would call domestic horror, focusing on the malignant evil lurking beneath us all and the potential of seemingly ordinary human beings to unpromtedly commit horrible acts of violence. Many of her stories call on the reader's imagination and are open for interpretation, which brings forth a strongly mysterious and gothic feeling. The stories in this collection, some weaker than the rest, illustrate her remarkably effective technique at evoking silent horror, and I think that every person's life would be a tad bit richer for reading at least one Shirley Jackson short story in their lifetime.