My mom read me “The Lottery” one day when I stayed home sick from school; I’ll never forget it.   I thought it was the best story I’d ever heard in my life; I had no idea what was coming.   Life Among the Savages I loved, too.   This bio is good; the writing is a little flat, but it doesn’t get in the way of the subject at all, and it’s a fascinating study of the difference between what a writer projects of her life and the reality of that life.   The fact that Jackson and her husband come off kind of like Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Lites is a little disconcerting, but it’s a good study and the prose is smooth and well-paced.   (4/6/04)

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