LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES <i> by Shirley Jackson (Academy Chicago: $8.95) </i>

Shirley Jackson (“The Lottery”) was already a respected writer in 1953, when she published this light-hearted account of an expatriate New York family’s life in rural Vermont. “Life Among the Savages” subsequently has been compared to Erma Bombeck’s columns, but Jackson was a more gifted and literate writer. Although she pokes gentle fun at the minor tribulations of domestic life, Jackson doesn’t predicate all her humor on failure. Instead of bemoaning her inability to lose weight, cook an edible meal or fix the plumbing, Jackson describes the confusion of an erudite couple and their children confronting a world they neither fully understand nor trust.