Shirley in The Roundtable

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Jul 23, 2014 Natalie Tyler rated it did not like it

Shelves: junk

At least ten years ago I read Merrell's "A Member of the Family" and found it memorable and haunting. I knew that there were negative reviews: Merrell dealt with a contentious issue but I was convinced that the novel was fiction and I remembered and admired its explication of deeply wounding human dilemmas. But what a falling off there has been!

As a long-time fan of Shirley Jackson, and a one-time fan of Merrell, I naturally wanted to read "Shirley". How devastated I am to report that I think th At least ten years ago I read Merrell's "A Member of the Family" and found it memorable and haunting. I knew that there were negative reviews: Merrell dealt with a contentious issue but I was convinced that the novel was fiction and I remembered and admired its explication of deeply wounding human dilemmas. But what a falling off there has been!

As a long-time fan of Shirley Jackson, and a one-time fan of Merrell, I naturally wanted to read "Shirley". How devastated I am to report that I think the "novel" is a disturbing gimmick that should not be legal. Depicting Shirley Jackson, her literary critic husband, and their children as fully fleshed "characters" seems simply a heinous way to grab onto Jackson's enduring fame.

I felt contaminated by association as I continued to read. How can Merrell know any of this? Can it really be legal to "fictionalize" somebody who has many living relatives and friends left who know more sides to the truth? Is such a work fair? Are Bernard Malamud and his wife accurately depicted?

While I will avoid spoilers, I thought that if Merrell wanted to write a book about a character like her Rose --a new mother and a quasi-faculty wife in the mid 1960's -- she could have done it without using Jackson and her family as an enormous calling card. This book will sell many copies because of the Jackson nexus but it's important to recall that this nexus is invented largely by Merrell based on possible rumours, possible gossip, and does not serve as anything but a rather sleazy and possibly illegal way to sell copies.

Finally reviews I have read on Amazon and Good Reads indicate that many readers are taking this as legitimate biographical material.

Caveat lector. I think it's unethical to put words in the mouths of people when you cannot provide a citation and a source. Evidently there is a biography coming out in a year or two. Take a look at it; see if it is authorized by the Jackson estate.

Merrell's ethical scope is about at the level of the paparazzi as far as I can ascertain. And finally had Merrell wanted to write about Jackson, she could have written something like Mead's "My Life in Middlemarch" which is about a reader's experience with a novel. Mead does not put words in Eliot's mouth. "Badly done, Merrell!" ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

May 11, 2014 Karen Michele Burns marked it as to-read

Like

Nov 20, 2014 Jen marked it as to-read

Shelves: 2013-releases, own-and-tbr

Like

From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

What Members Thought

The Roundtable