The sundial

Literary fiction · Dark comedy · Gothic · Satire

First published: 1958
Print length: 245 pagesPenguin, 1986

Description

At Lionel Halloran’s funeral, his widow suspects that his mother, Orianna, murdered him to inherit the family house. The accusation becomes another struggle for power inside the Halloran estate, an elaborate private world of gardens, a hedge maze, a summer house, and an artificial lake and grotto. After asserting control over the household, Orianna decides who may remain. Then a vision in the gardens warns that the world will soon end and that only the estate’s inhabitants will survive. As newcomers gather and apocalyptic visions intensify, the group stockpiles provisions for an Eden-like future while Orianna prepares to rule it. Shirley Jackson turns their preparations into a gothic black comedy about privilege, self-deception, and the desire to control catastrophe.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Dialogue-driven · Witty

Pace

Measured

Tone

Absurdist · Dark · Satirical · Unsettling

Structure

Linear

Focus

Atmosphere · Character · Ideas

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

ClassFamilyMortalityObsessionPowerReligion and faith

About Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson wrote novels, memoirs, and short stories, but her most characteristic fiction locates menace in ordinary domestic and communal life. Her prose often stays spare and controlled, letting routine conversation, social etiquette, and small departures from expected behavior carry the pressure. “The Lottery” begins as a matter-of-fact village gathering, with lists, families, and a battered black box, before its civic procedures reveal the violence protected by tradition. In her Gothic novels, uncertainty works more intimately. The Haunting of Hill House filters impossible architecture and apparent supernatural disturbances through Eleanor Vance’s loneliness and unstable sense of belonging, so that house and mind become difficult to separate. We Have Always Lived in the Castle narrows the world further through Merricat Blackwood’s intimate first-person voice, private magic, and rigid household rituals. Jackson repeatedly builds suspense through enclosure and partial knowledge rather than rapid action. Villages, houses, and families become systems whose rules appear settled until an outsider, a visitor, or a ritual exposes the cruelty holding them together.

Books by Shirley Jackson

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Penguin
Language: English

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