I’m a big fan of Shirley Jackson’s - The Haunting of Hill House is great, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a masterpiece, and her short stories are mostly amazing - but I was shocked at how utterly bad her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was.
Nothing happens. There’s no story. It’s set in small town America in the 1930s in a middle-class neighbourhood. Kids play, adults adult. There’s the vaguest suggestions of transgression like a couple having an affair, one woman possibly prostituting herself to pay the bills, some anti-Semitism - all so very lightly hinted at in that subtle way of Jackson’s. But nothing that adds up to a clear or even remotely compelling story.
There are far too many characters nearly all of whom are indistinct - they were just names to me and never individuals I could tell apart. That’s largely because they all seem to have the same personality (perhaps intentionally - Jackson commenting on the conformity of the society?) but also because none of them do anything to set themselves apart from the others. They’re such a horribly dull bunch to read about.
The only characters that stood out were the r-worded kids who move into the neighbourhood about halfway through and nothing happens with them besides them moving in. Jackson ends her rambling, unimpressive narrative with something that comes out of nowhere and has no impact because it comes out of nowhere and because the character was just another non-character - who could care? And what’s the point anyway? It’s so gratuitous and silly.
I was expecting to see something of the kind that went into the spooky stories Jackson became famous for but there was literally nothing here (there’s a passing reference to an old lady being dubbed a “witch” by the kids but she’s just an old lady who doesn’t do anything, like every other character). Unimaginably boring, I wouldn’t recommend Shirley Jackson’s The Road Through the Wall to anyone, fans or otherwise - spare yourself the tedium!
No comments:
Post a Comment