Dark Tales

A book that reads surprisingly dated in 2017, even if its contents are from the 1940s and '50s. What's worse, a book that doesn't convince as being a suitable 'best of', for that is what this selection is. Perhaps the fact that Jackson published six novels, but only one collection of short stories, in her life shows that this book's efforts are somewhat in vain. Pieces like 'Paranoia' are OK as far as they go, with their antiquated manner and obvious genre thrills, but that peters out, and the tale that follows it here just has a nonsense stop, and certainly not the obvious ending. There's one of those 'picture of an old house that is somehow alive' works – and a clumsy one, too, as is the 'ooh, how daring – a female killer' piece. Before that we've had 'The Possibility of Evil' – allegedly up there with her best, but far too meh to my mind. No, if this is a collated selection, it may well be my first and last Shirley Jackson. The style is too stilted, the looks at the sins behind the mundanest curtains too passe, and the story construction too poor, for me to continue with her.

Dark Tales is an interesting little collection of uncanny stories -- not stories which are openly horror, but ones with that creeping sense of unease, or that little twist. Like the man who finds someone stalking him all the way home, does his best to avoid him, and when he eventually gets home... his wife calls someone up to tell them she's got him. Twists like that, and moments where it feels like the story took a left turn from expected normality all of a sudden.

Shirley Jackson was a fine writer, and these stories are really well done in terms of structure and content: there's just enough in each one, but not so much that it makes things too obvious or belabours a point.

My only issue reading these was that the Kindle version received as an ARC wasn't properly structured, so you couldn't jump to a particular story, and the stories weren't actually separated from each other. I'm sure that's not the case in the printed work, but you might want to preview an ebook to make sure they did fix that.

[Review goes up 5th January 2017.]

This collection features some of Jackson's lesser known short stories, and it's a treat. These tales are indeed dark, and Jackson was an expert at revealing the darkness that hides behind the mundane and everyday.

This is a superb collection of 17 dark tales by the masterful writer, Shirley Jackson. They are designed to inspire unease and to unsettle. They are wide ranging in subject matter and each is a worthy read. The author has a gifted writing style that transports the reader to surprising and unexpected places. I particularly enjoyed The Good Wife, Paranoia and The Beautiful Stranger. There were occasions I wanted a little more depth and length to a story. A perfect collection for those who enjoy the gothic, an air of menace, spookiness and darkness. Wonderful. Thanks to Penguin for an ARC.

Don't know that I would call this dark - I was expecting horror, would have even settled for creepy but instead got weird or at best disconcerting. Some of the stories are interesting but the ebook format made it very tedious to read which didn't help unfortunately..

The book collects some tales by Shirley Jackson, author I already know for the novel We have always lived in the castle and for a couple of stories.

The tales belong the genres of horror and weird: the typical structure begins with a normal setting where dark elements appears and disturb the normal atmosphere. The endings close perfectly the tales and leave a sense of unease to the reader.

It's a very good collection that I will absolutely suggest to the ones who want to discover the imaginary of this author.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

Shirley Jackson is ALWAYS a winner. This is a collection of some of her best, darkest and creepiest tales, where nothing is as it seems.

Jackson is all about subtlety and atmosphere. Her tales often present a situation that is normal, or familiar at least, but her words gradually reveal a darker picture lurking just underneath. Reading her stories is incredibly unsettling; you feel like you need to keep looking over your shoulder, questioning the world around you, and yourself. She's on the of the few truly great writers of atmospheric fiction.

From Shirley Jackson, one of the masters of horror short stories, now comes a collection of seventeen stories. They are all in the tradition of the good old ghost story where you have the ostensibly ordinary people living a normal live until something strange happens. There is the old lady writing anonymous letters to trigger evil in her neighbours. A girl who tries to flee from her family, who can build a new and quite happy life and who thinks that it is her who has cut the thread with her parents. Or the strange elderly couple on a honeymoon whom everybody eyes suspiciously – there must be something wrong. The husband who only wants to get home to his loving wife just like the woman who hates the public bus drivers and wants to complain about them even before boarding the bus. Or Anne, the plain student who moves unobserved and could never do any harm – couldn’t she?

Although we have rather short stories which do not shed a light on the characters’ past and which do not have complicated plots, it is great fun to read. What all the stories have in common is the unexpected turning point. We have a quick rise in suspense until something unforeseen happens and we change our mind – either in how we judge the character whom we have followed over a couple of pages or about the context in which the story seems to have taken place. A lot of surprises and what I found especially striking is the fact that the stories are all different. You do not have a kind of parallel that you can recognize, no obvious repetitions in the structure or characters.

All in all, a collection perfect for winter evenings for lovers of classic short stories.

The review is also posted on:
https://www.amazon.de/review/R123SVS29440VP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1833600649

https://www.bookstr.com/book-review/reviewed-by-miss.mesmerized/110664/

http://www.buch.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/dark_tales/shirley_jackson/EAN9780241295427/ID45689386.html?jumpId=11679184

http://www.buecher.de/shop/romane--erzaehlungen/dark-tales/jackson-shirley/products_products/detail/prod_id/45298031/

https://missmesmerized.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/shirley-jackson-dark-tales/

http://wasliestdu.de/rezension/dark-tales

https://www.lovelybooks.de/autor/-/Dark-Tales-1401230540-w/rezension/1401230403/

My first taster of Shirley Jackson, a writer who has been on my radar for a while: these short stories are gloriously off-kilter, little gems of unease.

Some of them probe the hidden lives of women who appear 'nice' on the surface but have more going on underneath; others seem to channel the paranoia of 1950s USA with the anxiety of McCarthyism displaced onto strange and unsettling situations in urban environments; some are more clearly haunted stories. Jackson skill is to make the everyday (a bus driver who rushes past a stop or two) feel menacing and sinister, and there's an undertow of grotesque humour at times such as in the opening story set in a little traditional homely town.

There is something a little old-fashioned about these tales, though the tension between the sometimes-cosy settings and the trajectory of the story helps to foreground what is unnerving about them. I can see how a modern writer like Joyce Carol Oates draws on Jackson's influence to create her own contemporary tales of C21st unease.

So a good way to dip into Jackson and this has certainly whetted my appetite for her novels.

Posted on Amazon and Goodreads

Has a title ever been more appropriate than Shirley Jackson’s title of queen of American Gothic? Nope.

These stories are short and snappy - 17 stories in just over 200 pages! And not a single word is wasted. Jackson is a master of tension, suspense and quiet horror. There’s nothing overtly scary. No monsters, no blood, no on-page murder or death; it’s all psychological and that’s where Jackson shines.

My favourite stories in the collection are ‘The Possibility of Evi’, ‘Paranoia’, ‘What a Thought’ and ‘The Man in the Woods’. The creepiness of old houses, the unexplained actions of strangers and mysterious houses in the middle of the dark woods all deliver that same unnerving atmosphere and deep chill of evil. Deliciously dark.

This is a mixed bag of tales by Shirley Jackson, combining what appears to be fully thought out stories and some that appear to be brief ideas that were never fully utilised.

The majority of these tales take everday situations and skew them with a malicious delight. However some stories appear to briefly only to end without pushing things further. Stories such as 'All She Said Was Yes' and the surpring twist of 'Louisa, Please Come Home' show us the true skill of Shirley Jackson's writing however ones such as 'Jack the Ripper' feel like they could have had more to them.

I would advise people to read this only to see a true writer present some sinister tales of normality but also expect some to come appear all to briefly to warrant any sort of response from the reader.

I have wanted to read Shirley Jacksons work for months and I have bought 'the haunting of hill house' but I haven't read it yet however now I can't wait to. This is my second short story collection of the month and I'm starting to get into them although I personally find short story collections quite jarring but I love how quickly I can get through them and the variety of stories. I wasn't as impressed with this one as I was with Happy Ending NOT Guaranteed earlier in the month but I'd still recommend it.

The theme of all of the stories, as the title would suggest, is dark, atmospheric and usually family, marriage or relationship orientated which I liked as I find that any horror or darker stories related to family are really creepy. Some of the stories were very short but most where long enough to really get into the story and get to know the characters and the settings. I would say that 60% of the stories were darkly entertaining and interesting but for me about 40% of the stories were a little boring. I love Shirley Jackson's writing style and I definitely want to read more from her but this wasn't quite for me, probably because my expectations were so high going into it.

This book is like a box of really really good chocolates, very dark with unexpected centres. And best enjoyed one at a time! I have a feeling that they will improve with reading as well, so am very much looking forward to revisiting. Also, having had my first encounter with Jackson via audio, I think these would be excellent listened to. In a dark room...

Some of these stories I liked very much, others not at all. The quality of writing is undoubtedly high, but sometimes the narrative mechanism is too transparent, a couple of stories that stand on a certain dreamlike quality, lack of naturalness,and the novella set in the house on the lake, which is in some way associated with Northanger Abbey with a curious mirroring mechanism (Northanger Abbey is a satire of the gothic novel in which all the dark details reveal themself harmless, while in this gothic tale the house and its inhabitants, apparently bright, turn out very dark), is definitely cumbersome.
The very poor quality of the ebook in my possession , in which the stories begin one after another, not even separated by a line or title, did not help the reading.
Thank Penguin Books (UK) and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dark Tales is an anthology of Shirley Jackson’s stories made up of previous collections Come Along With Me, Just An Ordinary Day and Let Me Tell You - there’s no new material here. And, let me tell you, it’s also by far the weakest fiction of Jackson’s I’ve read!

I’m a big Shirley Jackson fan. I love The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Lottery and Other Stories, and have re-read each book at least twice, but the stories in Dark Tales are all pretty bad.

Jackson’s style is very lo-fi for the most part, slowly introducing eerie, creepy elements and finishing strongly with a powerful scene. Her most famous story, The Lottery, is the perfect example of that though numerous stories, mostly collected in The Lottery and Other Stories, have knockout twist endings and an unsettling tone of dread throughout that builds to a horrific climax.

The stories in Dark Tales start off similarly, focusing on the mundane everyday - and go nowhere. They just end as boringly as they began. Like in The Possibility of Evil, the character potters about her home and town, doing grocery shopping or cooking or writing letters, someone will do or seem a bit off, and then the story’s over. Louisa, Please Come Home sees a teenager run away from home and be forgotten by her family. Zzz…

The more overtly supernatural stories are only slightly less dull and seem like corny Twilight Zone knockoffs. Like in The Bus where a stranded woman gets a lift to a familiar house that turns out to be her childhood home and she can’t escape it. The story Home features a pair of ghosts who like to sit in cars. Really??

Like in a lot of Jackson’s stories, the menace of small town America her paranoia made her feel is prevalent like in The Summer People but it’s so much better realised in stories like The Lottery or her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

I suppose Dark Tales has well-written stories but Shirley Jackson is usually also able to grip and entertain the reader with the content as much as the style, and she fails consistently to do so throughout this collection. Evidently her best material is in her most well-known collection, The Lottery and Other Stories, which I’d recommend over this one. Dark Tales is full of nothing but bottom of the barrel scrapings - even if you’re a Jackson fan, this one’s not worth bothering with.

I really enjoyed this. Shirley Jackson is one of my favourite authors, so even though I'm not usually a short story person, I really savoured these. She's subtle and sly and deliciously dark, and I've not yet read her equal. I particularly liked the story of the man being chased all over New York on his way home from work by an ominous stranger. So quiet and calm but terrifying.

Unsettling, macabre and twisted tales. I loved them!!!

A series of Gothic short stories which are really clever and sometimes downright unsettling. Jackson sees the "worm in the bud" in American society and allows her perfectly ordinary characters to act and react in ways that are unexpected, to say the least.