The Sundial

See my full review on The Emerald City Book Review.This is a very strange book. It is funny, sometimes hilariously so, but it's also disorienting and savage and mystifying. The premise is, to say the least, odd: a megalomaniac matriarch, along with various descendants and hangers-on, have gathered in her walled estate to await the end of the world, of which they expect to be the only survivors. Given that most of the characters detest most of the others, the mind boggles at what will happen when their already-insular social circle is made even smaller. Classic country-house scenes of deliciously venomous dialogue are interspersed with visions and mysterious occurrences that give the whole book the quality of a nightmare from which it is singularly difficult to wake. I kept wondering what it would be like on stage or in a film, though sadly, I don't think this has a chance of coming to pass.

The word “horrid” seems to have fallen into disuse, how lovely that I get a chance to use it now! Not the book—its characters. Dreadful, the lot of them: self-absorbed, venal, contemptible from the very first page and increasingly more so.

Jackson had a gift for depicting us at our ghastliest. Here she uses a variety of paintbrushes, at times inspiring disgust, other times pity, once in a while veering into almost (Preston) Sturgesesque levels of farce. Her dialogue is believably natural. Her social commentary a bit heavyhanded at times but always spot-on. I’m left with mixed feelings: I want to read more of her work, but not for a while.

I predict that, when I think back on all of my reading of 2019, the Sundial is going to stand out as one of the greatest books I read all year (and, maybe ever). That's not to say I didn't lose patience with it at some points, I did, but the WOW is worth the WTF.

“I wonder what nonsense we would be engaged in if we were not doing this.”
I wonder indeed.
We have a family so wealthy the literally do nothing all day, a governess, a gigolo, and some hangers-on waiting around for the world as they know it to end. They have been guaranteed that they shall survive “The End” and that no one else will. The elephant in the room, of course, is WHY would people who have everything desire the world to end? Because, despite being at the top of the food chain, they are very unhappy people. One of them is a murderer (not a spoiler).
Parts of the novel are laugh out loud funny. Some of it is terrifying. Jackson is the queen of writing dialogue in which two characters are talking “at” each other, but having two totally conversations (I have since seen this again in her short fiction and it's incredible). I'm sure there is some literary term for it, I just don't know it. It's a hell of a thing to read and experience.
I was already convinced of Jackson's magic before picking this up, but this just knocked my respect up a few more levels. Incredible.