Reviews
Praise for Riddance "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair, Praise for Half Life: A Novel (2006) "Shelley Jackson''s sly, pyrotechnical talents are wedded to some particularly acute insights into human nature--her debut novel is audacious, smart as a paper cut, and will no doubt turn out to cure the common cold to boot. Half Life is twisty and vampy and campy, grotesque, picaresque, droll, and dazzling."--Kelly Link "Ingenious, sensual, gleeful--as well as sinister and perverse--Shelley Jackson''s first novel crackles with Nabokovian verbal fireworks and thrums with Borgesian philosophical implications. It demands of its readers only imagination, and rewards them with hilarity, terror, and marvels."--Jonathan Lethem "Shelley Jackson''s Half Life is the textual equivalent of an installation, a multivocal, polymorphous, dialogic, dystopian satire wrapped around a murder mystery wrapped around a bildungsroman. . . . Half Life is a Molotov cocktail of highly combustible intelligence. . . . In fact, the entire novel is quite complicated, a whirligig of futuristic constructs, elaborate adventures, Venn diagrams, black comedy, Boolean systems, hilarious send-ups of identity politics, lists, songs, and mad science. . . . The ambition of Half Life is truly glorious, and passage by passage Jackson is capable of fantastic runs."--Stacey D''Erasmo, The New York Times Sunday Book Review " Half Life . . . is a shimmering, dazzling delight, filled with the kind of humor and poignancy that should endear [Jackson] to thousands of new readers who wouldn''t know Kathy Acker from Kathie Lee Gifford. . . . Jackson combines the imagination of a born fabulist with the wit of a born satirist, and Half Life --for a good long stretch, at least--is a thrilling novel, by turns horrific, heartfelt, and hysterically funny."--Jeff Turrentine, The Washington Post "Big, ambitious, deeply strange, and strangely riveting."-- Newsday " Half Life is an extraordinarily rich offering. Sexual identity, personal identity, national identity--the lonely heart of the human condition gets deliciously disturbing and daring treatment. And what a treat it is to watch Jackson deftly use the Siamese twin''s dilemmas as a reflecting glass for our own solo quandaries."-- Seattle Post-Intelligencer "A remarkably poised and total work."-- The Village Voice "[A] brilliant and funny book."-- Newsweek.com "Like a queerer Don Delillo, or a sassier Pynchon. . . . This is writing that will turn you on."-- LA Weekly "Jackson''s prose is stunning--sharp and smart, witty and urbane in the extreme."-- The Baltimore Sun "The author has so mastered the art of description that her characters rise from the pages soft and sticky; at times they even smell."-- LA Times "Jackson''s prose is nothing short of dazzling."-- Publishers Weekly Praise for The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (2002) "Jackson takes deep-rooted anxieties about the body''s capacious growths, secretions, and desires and spins them into wry, absurdist fantasies. The effect of Jackson''s visceral, inventive details can be gorgeous, or utterly grotesque."--Megan Harlan, The New York Times "Witty, multilayered, and beautifully written: a startling and memorable collection."--Ali Smith "These tales prance and pirouette along the edge of the surreal. Sometimes they dive directly in, to bring back a sense of elegance, rightness, and great wisdom."--Samuel R. Delany "Shelley Jackson is one of the most poised and original talents of her generation . . . who, very playfully, very disturbingly, takes the body apart and puts it back together again, always in startlingly imaginative ways."--Robert Coover " The Melancholy of Anatomy marks the debut of a voice as gutsy and original as those of Kathy Acker and Angela Carter. Shelley Jackson is a surgeon of the psyche, a body philosopher, and her understanding of how dangerous it is simply to be alive is vital, heartfelt, even profound."--Bradford Morrow, Praise for Riddance One of Book Riot 's Upcoming Releases from Their Favorite Small Presses "This clever, cacophonous novel of metaphysical gothic from Jackson ( Half Life ) teems with voices of the living and the dead . . . Full of Carrollian logic and whimsical grotesquerie, the tale . . . is an illuminating allegory of fiction writing, for 'the necrocosmos is made of language; we precipitate a world with every word we speak.' Joines is a remarkable creation in a wonderful book--an imperious, otherworldly, and damaged figure who, haunted by her childhood, devises and devotes her life to a haunted philosophy." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Shelley Jackson is a writer of such extraordinary, uncanny power that the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I encounter her work. What an exhilarating, prickling, blistering book Riddance is! I made myself read it as slowly as possible in order to stay in as long as I could." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble: Stories "Wow! Riddance is an extraordinarily inventive, spooky, fascinating, surprising book. On one level a mash-up of Moby-Dick and Jane Eyre ; on another, an intricate literary puzzle; and at heart, a poignant investigation of what happens when we try to make the world a better place. It simply amazed me." --Allegra Huston, author of Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance One of Book Riot ''s Upcoming Releases from Their Favorite Small Presses "The wildly creative Jackson . . . spins a fragmented, Gothic murder mystery." -- Los Angeles Times "Polyphonic." -- New York , 1 of 60 New Books to Read This Fall "This clever, cacophonous novel of metaphysical gothic from Jackson ( Half Life ) teems with voices of the living and the dead . . . Full of Carrollian logic and whimsical grotesquerie, the tale . . . is an illuminating allegory of fiction writing, for ''the necrocosmos is made of language; we precipitate a world with every word we speak.'' Joines is a remarkable creation in a wonderful book--an imperious, otherworldly, and damaged figure who, haunted by her childhood, devises and devotes her life to a haunted philosophy." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Not only an incredible yarn but a delightfully strange, wondrously original, and dazzlingly immersive gothic love letter to storytelling." -- Booklist "Shelley Jackson is a writer of such extraordinary, uncanny power that the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I encounter her work. What an exhilarating, prickling, blistering book Riddance is! I made myself read it as slowly as possible in order to stay in as long as I could." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble: Stories "Wow! Riddance is an extraordinarily inventive, spooky, fascinating, surprising book. On one level a mash-up of Moby-Dick and Jane Eyre ; on another, an intricate literary puzzle; and at heart, a poignant investigation of what happens when we try to make the world a better place. It simply amazed me." --Allegra Huston, author of Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the ''Documentarian of the Dead,'' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school''s headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance One of Book Riot 's Upcoming Releases from Their Favorite Small Presses "This clever, cacophonous novel of metaphysical gothic from Jackson ( Half Life ) teems with voices of the living and the dead . . . Full of Carrollian logic and whimsical grotesquerie, the tale . . . is an illuminating allegory of fiction writing, for 'the necrocosmos is made of language; we precipitate a world with every word we speak.' Joines is a remarkable creation in a wonderful book--an imperious, otherworldly, and damaged figure who, haunted by her childhood, devises and devotes her life to a haunted philosophy." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Polyphonic." -- New York "Shelley Jackson is a writer of such extraordinary, uncanny power that the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I encounter her work. What an exhilarating, prickling, blistering book Riddance is! I made myself read it as slowly as possible in order to stay in as long as I could." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble: Stories "Wow! Riddance is an extraordinarily inventive, spooky, fascinating, surprising book. On one level a mash-up of Moby-Dick and Jane Eyre ; on another, an intricate literary puzzle; and at heart, a poignant investigation of what happens when we try to make the world a better place. It simply amazed me." --Allegra Huston, author of Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance "Wow! Riddance is an extraordinarily inventive, spooky, fascinating, surprising book. On one level a mash-up of Moby-Dick and Jane Eyre ; on another, an intricate literary puzzle; and at heart, a poignant investigation of what happens when we try to make the world a better place. It simply amazed me." --Allegra Huston, author of Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West, Praise for Riddance "Shelley Jackson is a writer of such extraordinary, uncanny power that the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I encounter her work. What an exhilarating, prickling, blistering book Riddance is! I made myself read it as slowly as possible in order to stay in as long as I could." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble: Stories "Wow! Riddance is an extraordinarily inventive, spooky, fascinating, surprising book. On one level a mash-up of Moby-Dick and Jane Eyre ; on another, an intricate literary puzzle; and at heart, a poignant investigation of what happens when we try to make the world a better place. It simply amazed me." --Allegra Huston, author of Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found "Thomas Edison considered building a device to speak with the dead. A century later, Shelley Jackson has. This book is a ghost portal. It is also a genius work of art; a lost history; a rollicking, wondrous, Borgesian library; and a haunting so gloriously conceived, reader, you will shudder."-- Samantha Hunt, PEN/Faulkner finalist for The Dark Dark " Riddance is a book like no other, a murder mystery channeled back from the next life, in conversation with the great authors and characters of the 1800s--Melville, the Brontës, Bartleby, and Jane Eyre. Shelley Jackson has created the book I have dreamt of, a book that does not contain magic, but that is actually magic. A story that spans the divide separating the living and the dead, but that proposes death not as static but adventure. When my time comes, I hope--like her heroine Sybil--to be a necronaut."-- Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair "You never know what Shelley Jackson is going to do next--you just know it will be something brilliant." -- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island , short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize "A terrific piece of tragicomic fiction. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab--young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead--but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. The many asides--such as the 'Documentarian of the Dead,' the forays into Principles of Necrophysics , the amazing stage show near the end of the novel--very nearly match the power of the central narrative, carried by the school's headmistress and her stenographer, but their stories do indeed provide the harrowing climax. The book has been brilliantly produced by Black Balloon Publishing." -- Robert Coover, author of Huck Out West
