Reviews
This one started off with a bang - pushed down the stairs, or fell? Ghost encounter or madness or lies? - but then slowed waaay down. At first I resented the change in tempo, but after finishing the book I understand how necessary that change was to the plot. And it works, it really works.
I love being able to step into Shirley Jackson's universe, and this book certainly let me. However, not my favorite of her books.
In The Sundial, perhaps Shirley Jackson’s most comical novel, twelve rather disagreeable individuals are cooped together in a mansion waiting for the end of the world. When Aunt Fanny, a rather ditsy spinster is threatened out of her family home by her megalomaniac sister-in-law, she is quite rightfully distressed. Lucky for Aunt Fanny, on that very same day she happens to hear the disembodied voice of her deceased father. He warns Aunt Fanny of an impending apocalypse and tells her not to leave the Halloran estate: “Tell them in the house that they will be saved. Do not let them leave the house.” What ensues is a comedy of sorts, as the family is engulfed in growing madness, fear, and violence. Lost in the thought of a coming paradise, their interior lives collide into utter madness. The novel is packed with hilarious observations, and the characters act so strangely in their belief of the coming apocalypse. They create rules to abide by; they destroy books; they throw one last little party for the town. Like the mansion in The Haunting of Hill House, the Halloran estate is a character. Shirley writes: “THE CHARACTER OF THE HOUSE IS PERHAPS OF INTEREST. IT STOOD UPON A SMALL RISE IN GROUND, AND ALL THE LAND IT SURVEYED BELONGED TO THE HALLORAN FAMILY. THE HALLORAN LAND WAS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD BY A STONE WALL, WHICH WENT COMPLETELY AROUND THE ESTATE, SO THAT ALL INSIDE THE WALL WAS HALLORAN, ALL OUTSIDE WAS NOT.” This is yet another novel by Jackson that explores the double function of houses: the Halloran mansion is both a fortress—a place of safety—and a prison. And in the end, as the family awaits the coming paradise, in the midst of a storm, it surely seems like the mansion is more prison than a safe refuge. The Sundial, written before Hill House, is a slowly haunting book, with no easy answers. Is it about the danger of belief? Is it about the danger of greed? Is it a critique of the privileged? Perhaps. It will leave you thinking like all great literature does, long after you close the pages.
I have never thought of Shirley Jackson as an author of humour, but now have reason to change my opinion. That her brand of humour remains faithful to her chilling, unnerving style is to her great merit.
probably my least favorite shirley jackson, unfortunately. i got the Point and i was invested in parts of it but i couldn’t make myself care for the rest (also in retrospect, reading it while experiencing brain fog might’ve been a bad idea...my bad). the chapter centered on julia was peak shirley jackson though and i Loved it!!
Faintly sinister. In hindsight this probably wasn't the best book to pick up after reading the excellent We Have Always Lived in the Castle because it's known to be one of Jackson's weaker reads which I didn't know whilst choosing. With that being said I'll remember the fog/statue scene for a long time and I'm definitely interested in reading more Jackson in the future.
What a weird, dark, funny, vicious book.
I love Shirley Jackson, but I love other books she wrote more than this one.
