The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
The Sundial by Shirley Jackson, first published in the USA in 1958 by Farrar, Straus and Cudady. Paperback Penguin edition of 2014 reviewed. In an odd sense, this reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. In The Sundial, Mrs Halloran, a woman prone to internalising events, prepares for a party in her house, but that may be where the comparison ends. Mrs Halloran is expecting the world as we know it to end, with only the inhabitants of her house being saved. Her sister-in-law, Aunt Fanny, has been given a prophetic message of doom by Fanny's dead father, and the family, friends and retainers must prepare for the apocalypse. Mrs Halloran inherited the house on the death of her son, as her husband is paralysed and confined to a wheelchair and also suffers from dementia. Her son died after falling down the stairs in the house, giving rise to rumours of foul play among her relatives, not least because Orianna Halloran is a tyrant, presiding over the lives of her sick husband, daug...