Shirley Jackson Presides Over the End of the World

High on a hill above a village somewhere there stood a large mansion constructed by a man who could think of nothing better to do with his money than set up his own world. He managed with only middling success to convey his idea of that world to the architects, carpenters, masons, etc., but it was certainly true that the finished product had a little bit of everything.

The mansion was profusely decorated, symmetrically, and the walled grounds surrounding it included an ornamental lake, a pagoda, a maze, and a rose garden. The house contained a 10,000 volume (leather-bound) library, and on every conspicuous surface through the building were carved helpful thoughts, such as "When Shall We Live If Not Now?"

General Cataclysm

Descendants of the curious first Mr. Halloran, builder of this desirable piece of real estate, now inhabited his world, avoiding as much as possible the outside world of other mortals. Then one day one of their number perceived, in an apparition of the first Mr. Halloran, that the end of the outside world was not far off. Humanity, as an experiment, had failed, and the gods who created it had decided that all on earth save the twelve denizens of the Halloran mansion should perish in a general cataclysm.

The twelve, Hallorans and various hangers-on, were high class people despite an unusual and even rather bizarre outlook. They cheerfully went about adjusting themselves to their prospects of survival:

Mrs. Halloran, who had lately rendered fatherless her grandchild Fancy through an expedient shove of her hapless son down a long stairway ("His funeral went off very well."), consolidated her grasp of the affairs of the household;

Aunt Fanny, medium of the news from the late Mr. Halloran, busily went about ordering first-aid kits and jars of olives ("Just a few small luxuries.") against the day that Sears, Roebuck would probably not be open for business;

Paradise in a Mirror

And Gloria, a precocious 17-year old who climbed over the wall to the estate because her father had left her and trundled off to Africa, added to the general enthusiasm for the future life with vaguely erotic pictures of Paradise which she envisioned in a mirror. And others in other interesting ways.

A climax of sorts builds when Mrs. Halloran, feeling pretty good on the day before the scheduled holocaust, puts on a tiara ("My crown!") and throws a farewell bacchanal all over the lawn for the poor villagers. Fools, they don't know any better and go ahead and have a good time though not as good a time as Mrs. Halloran. What happens next day I had better not tell.

Careful Shading

Miss Jackson carries off all this in a cool manner: the irony manner gets out of hand. If the novel, a short one by all odds, seems at times on the long side, this is because she is carefully shading her characters and needs space to do so. The book doesn't seem to have any compelling or original themes that have not popped up in high-class escape writing before; but as a tightly and incisively constructed piece, worthy of a goodly bit of concentration, it rates very well indeed.