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This is a strange and unusual collection. Jackson’s children found a box of their mother’s unpublished stories decades after her death. Thirty of them are included here, along with 22 additional stories that were only published once. I believe they span almost the whole of her writing career, the last story coming out after her death. This is not a great intro to her work--some of the stories are, well, the kind you’d put away in a box. But to a Jackson fan like me, taken as a whole, this is revelatory and inspiring.

The fun part was immersing myself in her style. Just like with The Lottery (though not as good, obviously), I noticed she disarms you with her regularness, and then lays something crazy on you. I’m just like you, but look what I see! I love the title for that reason. It’s just an ordinary day, but Shirley sees something different in it. That’s not to say these are supernatural or spooky stories. Only one or two come close to that. But they do explore humanities odd, quirky side. Many are kind of like her Life Among the Savages, only as if she wrote them not caring who would read them, which made them scandalously fun.

The first story was one of my favorites, The Smoking Room , where you learn you can trick the devil with words.

The best spooky one was Summer Afternoon , about two pre-school aged girls and a ghost.

The Very Hot Sun in Bermuda - man, this one sounded like an exposé of her husband’s flings with his students. Ouch!

And I loved how Shirley, the 1950’s housewife, wrote a number of stories with mysteriously magical helpers that came into the home and took care of meals and children and kept everything together.

Several stories made me think Shirley was more like Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House than I may have imagined. She grew up very much an outsider in an affluent suburb of San Francisco that I know well, and I suspect the small towns she included in these stories were inspired by that snobbish enclave.

One of my favorites was a silly one--she is good at silly stuff. In Maybe it was the Car , she is being taken for granted at home, so takes off on an adventure of her own. “I am a writer, I said to myself in the corner of the kitchen. I am a writer and here I sit broiling hamburgers.� �'Listen,� I said, ‘am I a writer or am I a middle-aged housewife?’�

Another favorite was What a Thought . You know how sometimes you let your imagination go and picture some disaster, like a train wreck or hitting someone over the head with a shovel? Yeah, well, Shirley knew about this and wrote a great story around it.

I didn’t like the section of once-published stories as much. Publication dates span from 1943 to 1968, in magazines from Good Housekeeping to Playboy. Here, in contrast to the unpublished ones, I felt she was holding back. Some interesting explorations, but no standouts for me.

Recommended for fans, and for a deep dive into Shirley Jackson’s writing style. A fun journey.