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Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Kendra Adkins of 

Adkins recently picked up "Life Among the Savages," Shirley Jackson's autobiographical story collection about the chaos of raising her four children.

For Jackson, who is best known for unsettling works like "The Haunting of Hill House," it shows a different side — her domestic life. 

"I loved it. Dearly," Adkins said, "I had no idea she was so witty and dry. Because of the book, I'm now going on and reading her other works."

New biography chronicles Shirley Jackson's "Rather Haunted Life"

High school is where most people encounter Jackson, if they read her at all. Her short story, "The Lottery," is on many a syllabus. But her novels are not as well-known, and so Adkins recommends picking up "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." 

It's modeled after the town where Jackson lived with her family in Vermont.

"It was, like a lot of little towns, not so welcoming to outsiders. In the '40s, it had a very particular anti-intellectualism bent and some anti-Semitism going on," Adkins said. "So she writes a lot about modern-day evil — how it's all around us and how do we move through that? How do we continue to live with it?"

The book is narrated by 18-year-old Merricat, one of only three surviving members of the Blackwood family. She and her sister and uncle have locked themselves away in their house, after the rest of their family was murdered by arsenic poisoning. The people in the town suspect her sister was responsible for the deaths.


In true bookseller fashion, Adkins has a second recommendation — and a stark departure from "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." She recommends "Pond" by Claire-Louise Bennett.

The book, she said, is like "you're having coffee with a friend and you're jumping from topic to topic to topic." For anyone who enjoys non-linear, meditative stories, "Pond" will be a pleasure.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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Tracy Mumford

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Bookseller Kendra Adkins recommends a novel from the underappreciated queen of haunting and horror, Shirley Jackson.

A family locks itself away after a series of murders

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