From the Bookshelf of The Obscure Reading Group…

The Sundial

Shirley Jackson

Start date: October 1, 2021

Discussion: The Sundial

Why we're reading this: October 2021 reading selection.
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The Sundial

* Reading Schedule for THE SUNDIAL (Oct., 2021)
By Ken · 1 post · 36 views

last updated Sep 15, 2021 11:54AM

Week #2 Discussion: The Sundial (Chs. 8-End)
By Ken · 52 posts · 70 views

last updated Oct 19, 2021 05:45PM

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What Members Thought

Oct 09, 2021 Alan rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: origin-american

It was Harold Bloom who said “You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock.” Once in a while, a book comes along that really makes the clock in your head salient. This was it. “Tick tock” yelled the clock. “Why not us?” screamed the classics on my shelves.

I will leave the well-worded review to my more willing Goodreads friends, I have nothing to say. It was, however, mighty fun reading this along with others in a book ...more

35 likes · Like · see review

Oct 13, 2021 Ken rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2021

Having only read her in-every-anthology short story, "The Lottery," I was expected something quite suspenseful. Pip could've warned me about Great Expectations, I guess.

This book looked like it was searching for itself. Really. I'm surprised I didn't find it in California. Or any location where crystals are sold.

It started like it might be spooky. Big house. Crazy old lady. Giant maze outside to get lost in while "warm" marbled statues reach out and touch her.

But spookiness was run down and ta ...more

34 likes · Like · see review

Oct 05, 2021 Matthew Ted rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, ml-reads, read-2021, lit-american, genre-horror

103rd book of 2021.

1.5. I was in London for a long weekend visiting my old university housemate and he asked me about this novel as it was a book-club choice, a club we are both a part of. He hadn't found the time to pick up a copy. I told him he missed nothing, it was poor and I didn't like it at all. Returning to my review then, I realise 2-stars isn't accurate. I've given it a half star more purely for two scenes in this novel which are fine, the rest is just aimless boring prose with ridicul ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Oct 08, 2021 Kathleen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-authors, humor, women-writers

“… the rest of them believed in what they could--power, perhaps, or the comforting effects of gin, or money.”

I have been feeling more than a little apocalyptic lately. Climate change is wreaking its havoc in fires and floods. People are unhinged from the confines of the pandemic and the evils of Facebook. Shops are shuttering, prices are soaring, we’re being strangled by supply chain problems … it goes on and on.

So, you could say the perfect time for an end-of-the-world story, and the perfect ti “… the rest of them believed in what they could--power, perhaps, or the comforting effects of gin, or money.”

I have been feeling more than a little apocalyptic lately. Climate change is wreaking its havoc in fires and floods. People are unhinged from the confines of the pandemic and the evils of Facebook. Shops are shuttering, prices are soaring, we’re being strangled by supply chain problems … it goes on and on.

So, you could say the perfect time for an end-of-the-world story, and the perfect time for Shirley Jackson.

Jackson is an odd duck, that’s for sure. Her books almost always leave me scratching my head, and this one is no exception. It could be an allegory, it could be a farce, or it could be just pure silliness.

The story is about a wealthy family living on top of a hill next to a much poorer village. Their long-deceased patriarch visits them with a prophecy about the end of the world--for all but them, as long as they stay in the house. It gives Jackson lots of room to play with the shallowness of the rich.

“‘All the houses and people and automobiles and everything will be just melted away.’ She sighed again. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to make our coffee that first morning.’”

But she doesn’t stop at mocking the rich. We are all human, and therefore vulnerable--rich or poor, inside or outside, the chosen ones or the left behind.

“Like I keep trying to tell you, it doesn’t matter which world you’re in.”

For me, writing is very much like playing with a doll house, the way the young girl Fancy does in this story. You create characters, dress them up and move them around in little scenes. You can feel Shirley Jackson playing here. She’s created an inordinate amount of characters and amusing little backstories for them. She played with fright but never submitted to it. Sometimes a cloud of noir darkness passes over, but then it goes away. The overall tone is mocking--primarily of the powerful, but sometimes of the powerless too.

I think Jackson’s gift is she forces you to look at things differently, even in a silly story like this one, and that opens your mind a little. I predict, as has happened with her other novels (even the ones that seemed pointless) that I’ll think from time to time about this story and wonder, who am I believing here? What is controlling me? And I may say to myself, with a shudder, “Maybe life is more like Fancy’s doll house than we care to believe.” ...more

26 likes · Like · see review

Oct 06, 2021 Sue rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, read-2021

Such an odd farce Jackson produced in The Sundial. With echoes of an Oscar Wilde play, she has brought together twelve people in the large, overdone mansion of the Halloran family. Action opens after the funeral for the son/husband/father Lionel, an unmissed member apparently tripped on the stairs leading to his death. There isn’t much mourning but the craziness ensues early on, capped by Aunt Fanny’s rather amazing vision in the secret garden. She has received a message from her Father…the worl ...more

25 likes · Like · see review

Oct 03, 2021 Ginny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My favourite end of the world novel. A wonderful comical romp. Not at all what I thought it would be.

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 17, 2022 Cindy Newton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible

I'm already a Shirley Jackson fan, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The whole thing is delightfully tongue-in-cheek! I wasn't really expecting the level of sardonic humor. The premise is at first rather absurd--the end of the world is foretold to a senile old woman by the ghost of her dead father. Skeptical at first, the rest of the family and the outsiders are drawn into her belief, motivated by their greed and determination to survive the possible apocalypse to claim the surviving ...more

1 like · Like · see review