Riddance is an astounding feat of imagination. Like the disembodied voices conjured by the 'hearing-mouth children' who attend Sybil Joines' Vocational School, Jackson's fictive vision will challenge you and make you examine language's power as well as its potential to heal and cause harm." Good idea. This book was provided to my by @catapult in exchange for my review. The students are schooled in the art of channeling the dead, the process of which is aided by their stuttering. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. Jane Grandison is tormented by her schoolmates and family members because of her stutter-that is, until she is invited to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children. This is writing that will turn you on." This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. The author has a wide-ranging vocabulary, and not just in the field of necromancy, etc. "In Shelley Jackson’s Riddance, ghosts speak in the space between sounds in a child’s stutter. fiction, anthology The subject of the newspaper clipping is a murder at SJVS, and that mystery becomes the central focus of the remainder of the novel. The novel’s language [is] alluring [and] reflects the unknown that lies beyond, around and within us." Like Miss Peregrine's rewritten by Victor LaValle. Idea is intriguing, but narrative flow just wasn't there. Sometimes they dive directly in, to bring back a sense of elegance, rightness, and great wisdom.” ―Samuel R. Delany, “Shelley Jackson is one of the most poised and original talents of her generation . Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. . ― Publishers Weekly, Praise for The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (2002), “Jackson takes deep-rooted anxieties about the body's capacious growths, secretions, and desires and spins them into wry, absurdist fantasies. I felt about this book the same way I felt about the movie Stalker: the drudgery and repetition are part of the point, and you either are super into it or you hate it. . This is an exquisitely written novel about two women and a school for students with speech impediments. Honestly, I've lost track of all these threads, which the author has. Jackson herself channels a multitude of famous dead authors from Charlotte Brontë to Samuel Beckett, producing a metafictional style that is witty, imaginative, rich with stunning metaphors, and often playfully profound. ―The New Yorker, "The wildly creative Jackson . This 1919 gothic tale is told from the alternating points of view of Sybil and Jane, the student-turned-stenographer. Sybil Joines, the headmistress, believes that stuttering, when properly channeled, is a highly evolved method of communication with the dead. Ostensibly about a 1919 murder at a vocational school for stammerers in Massachusetts, a school that doubles as a kind of spiritualism lab―young stammerers thought to be particularly adept at communicating with the dead―but more centrally about time and death, familiar targets of most fictionists, especially those of the crepuscular sort. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Eleven-year-old Jane Grandison, tormented by her stutter, sits in the back seat of a car, letter in hand inviting her to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children.