As I noted last month, I picked up this Shirley Jackson collection after Benjamin Dreyer's effusive praise of her in Dreyer's English. The title story was one among many that I reread from this work - others included "The Renegade", "After You, My Dear Alphonse", and "The Dummy"; the best of all in my opinion was "Seven Types of Ambiguity".
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (September 2020)
Not much in my book notes from this one, though browse as much as you'd like; no rush, they'll be there next time.
The general bit of insight I liked the most was that people isolated together by chance tend to interact with a certain version of friendliness - if you require a demonstration, stop by for a visit and wait until I run into a neighbor. But such easily distilled commentaries are rare occurrences in these stories, which for the most part are nothing more than wonderfully-told stories; you are forgiven for wondering why I'm bothering to highlight this fact, but sometimes I forget that sort of thing in my quest to learn something from everything.
TOA Rating: Three dots out of four.
For you trivia buffs out there, the date of the lottery is June 27 - join me for a round of Keno.
