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  • Published: 1 May 2014
  • ISBN: 9780718196363
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 46

The Witch



A four-year-old boy sits on a train with his mother and his baby sister. The mother attends to the baby. The little boy daydreams. An elderly man with a pleasant face joins the carriage. He asks, "Do you love your sister?" An ordinary question asked by an ordinary man. He continues, "I had a little sister... I took her and put my hands around her neck and I pinched her and I pinched her until she was dead."
Playing with the line between fact and fiction, Shirley Jackson's short story is disruptive and shocking, yet oddly familiar and reminiscent. It disturbs the commonplace, probing the façade of the everyday to question exactly just of what people are capable.

  • Published: 1 May 2014
  • ISBN: 9780718196363
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 46

About the author

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story 'The Lottery', which was published in 1949. Her novels - which include The Sundial, The Bird's Nest, Hangsaman, The Road through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House - are characterised by her use of realistic settings for tales that often involve elements of horror and the occult. Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages are her two works of nonfiction. Come Along With Me is a collection of stories, lectures, and part of the novel she was working on when she died in 1965.

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