The Shadow Knows

This book is so good that it inspired Stanley Kubrick to hire Johnson to write the screenplay for The Shining. Kubrick ain't wrong.

Outlandish, quotidian, literary, profound. An eventful week in the life of a divorced mother of four in Sacramento reads like something out of Poe. Quite an accomplishment.

Good read. Would have been interesting to see how Kubrick intended to adapt it.

This should possibly be a 4, rather than a 3, but I don't quite know how to feel about it. Certainly a fascinating book, and an interesting narrator (who is probably best understood if we consider what she doesn't tell us as much as what she does tell us), but it also takes a few wrong turns – I'm not sure what to think of the last two pages or so.

Well written – sometimes very much so – and bleakly atmospheric, full of paranoia and denial, with a lot to say about women/gender, and race (and socio-economic issues). Not all of it right, necessarily (pick up on the author's sarcasm, filter out some of the main character's points, even if she isn't to be ignored, just approached with caution), but there's a (rightfully) scathing criticism of how women were treated to be found here. The advice column letter, with the answer of ''oh, of course your husband is cheating on you, and it's fine, he's just at that age – and maybe you should make yourself prettier for him to avoid that sort of thing'' is insane, and probably pretty accurate in its satire.

I was kind of poised to recommend this to people up until the very end (the nightclub bit was bizarre, but good, though) but on the other hand, I'm not in any position to find the ending problematic, so I don't know. This is gibberish to anyone who hasn't read the book, so I'll leave it at that, and with a tentative recommendation.

As I devoured this book (I adore Johnson) I struggled to determine what she was trying to accomplish. Is it a mystery; are we meant to figure out who is behind the bizarre acts that befall N over the course of a week? Is it a comedy (it *is* very funny)? Is it a satire? Is it a book about how we are never truly safe and comfortable, that life is unpredictable and wild and uncontrollable, and how as parents this fear of what life will dish up is especially terrifying because the parent is all that stands between children and the big bad world? Can anyone become a murderer w/ the right provocation? The bizarre events have multiple witnesses, but are they all symbolic of something else? What does the shadow know?

N's life is a mess: She is divorced, has four kids who live with her in a housing project, may be pregnant with a married man's child, has been thinking idly of suicide, has received a cold letter from said married lover, has a crazy ex-husband -- and is now worried about getting murdered. Despite all this, she tries to "think radiantly." She is at heart a well-meaning person, if often off course or complacent, even naive. Her life has been picture-book until it slipped - she had a successful husband, she lived on the hill, she had a live-in nanny, she replaced the lack of love in her life w/ lovers. One by one, however, all these props are lost, and she's left with the life we see in this week of the novel. Ev lives with her, and her life is a mess, too: she is beaten and robbed by her lover, her own brother stole her glasses, she longs for a place of her own, even a place in the slums.

"The Shadow" was a radio program in the late 30s; the slogan was "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" If the shadow is after N, then she's the one with something to hide. To want to murder someone, however, must have at its source some wrong-doing, and what can passive N have done to make someone want to kill her...or Ev, for that matter? (I'm not sure, however, that this is where Johnson got her title...). At the very end of the novel, N says that she feels like a shadow, thin and light. She feels that the culminating event has occurred, and she feels relief, despite what's she's been through, as if knowing that it is over has made what has happened almost worth it?!

**spoiler alert**
Bizarre events:
-front door hacked up w/ axe or knife and smeared with what looked like blood and oil (Bess?)
--phantom phone caller (not Bess)
--Osella's hate calls
--someone cut the crotch out of four pairs of Ev's underwear (this stinks of Osella)
--*maybe* someone at the window on NYE
--strangled cat on door step
--vomit on windshield (Bess? she has access)
--Ev getting beat up in laundry room (Osella?)
--tires are slashed (Bess? she had knife)
--previously N sees her ex-husband sitting on Osella's lap and sees him in the crib w/ the baby late one night
--Osella burns an effigy of N on the front lawn

List of people she knows want to hurt her or Ev:
--A.J. - Ev's violent lover
--Clyde - Ev's abusive husband
--Gavin - N's ex-husband
--Osella - N's ex-housekeeper
--Phantom phone caller?
--Cookie - Andrew's wife
--checker at the grocery store

What's interesting is that the horrible and bizarre things are most likely perpetrated by the women in the novel, and yet the book ends as it does w/ a man inflicting violence.

How Bess describes N, with feelings of hatred driven by jealousy:
--stupid
--inner life of a cow or child
--simple-minded
--no sympathy for others
--hard and cold
--a taker
--insensitive

A paranoid mother who looks for, expects and becomes satisfied with all that is negative in life. What a waste of time.

The writing was lovely and unpretentious, but after reading about 80 pages, I skipped past 200 pages and didn't seem to miss much. That's never good. The twist at the end was radical and surprising, but I kind of wish I'd never read it.

I remember reading this and being very surprised at how good it was in the 80's (I'd never heard of it) and I thought I'd give it another look.