The Missing Girl
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
' "Of course, no one would want to say anything about a girl like this that's missing..." ' Malice, paranoia and creeping dread lie beneath the surface of ordinary American life in these chilling miniature masterworks of unease. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
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The atmosphere and surrealist tone of the stories, especially for The Missing Girl and Nightmare, adds to their creepiness. Love her style, even if, for Nightmare, the ending was abrupt and gave me question marks than answers.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say “Invisibility” was the theme running through the stories. In the first, so little information about the missing girl could be obtained from the people around her including her own room-mate that it's as if no one paid her any attention; in the second, a child lends a woman the cloak of Invisibility she desires; and in the third, no one notices a woman even when a van is blaring her exact description on the streets of New York and escalating rewards (a yatch, $50k, unlimited travel, etc) are offered for her identification.
These stories don't have the shock twist and horror of The Lottery; the sense of dread is present but mild, and in all three, peters off at the end.
Worth a read if you're keen to become more familiar with Shirley Jackson's works.
Shirley Jackson is a very talented writer. I personally had a frustrating reading experience as Jackson's endings are typically very open and ambiguous. However she has a talent for making an ordinary story take on a creepier undertone. The last story Nightmare is by far the strongest story and the one I enjoyed the most. Nightmare has the most similarities to The Lottery in its structure and execution. I am left intrigued more than ever about Jackson's works after reading this book and I am hoping to turn to her novels next, very soon. A 3 star read for me.
