Book Review: Shirley Jackson's first novel, The Road Through the Wall, explored the hidden, ingrained cruelties of suburban families: racism, religious and disability discrimination, bullying, classism, the emotional brutality of parents to children and children to other children. Most of which acts are disguised as kindness or cloaked in politeness. The book also paints the difficulties of poverty, age, loneliness, and isolation in this supposedly idyllic space. If The Road Through the Wall is a picture of Shirley Jackson's childhood, I don't envy her that (it's seemingly set in 1936). In addressing so many earnest issues, however, we have almost too many characters, and almost none are sympathetic. The reader may want to keep a chart of the families based on the Genesis-like Prologue. There is little plot, more an accumulation of carefully detailed episodes, telling incidents, and deep emotional subtleties, that Jackson uses to tell her story. Jackson also provides an inevitable, but mysterious, conclusion. The book is a prologue to her famous short story, "The Lottery," as in this: "Pleasure was in the feeling that the terrors of the night, the jungle, had come close to their safe lighted homes, touched them nearly, and departed, leaving every family safe but one." Two final notes: first, although I have trouble expressing why, my feeling of this is that it is an excellent novel, better than any individual moment or reason I can identify, if that makes any kind of sense. Reminded me at times, in a good way, of The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. Second, the Foreword in the Penguin Classics edition is by Jackson's future biographer, who here finds a developmentally disabled girl's confusion and mistakes as "wonderful moments of humor." That chilled me to the bone, and given that insight it's with trepidation I await her new biography of Jackson in September 2016. The Road Through the Wall is an insightful examination of childhood sorrows and adult failures. Well worth reading by more than just Shirley Jackson fans. [4 Stars].
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