It seemed to have had its picture taken without her it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified she was only its unwilling vehicle.

Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. Her stories are among the most terrifying ever written Donna Tartt Savidge Reads also read The Tooth and loved it.Including her iconic tale The Lottery, The Tooth brings together a short selection of Shirley Jacksons most sinister stories. More Mini Moderns: You can read my reviews of other Mini Moderns – Children on their Birthdays, by Truman Capote (4/5), and Through The Wall, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (5/5), and see a list of other blogger’s reviews of this excellent series at the Curious Book Fans blog.

As a collection I thought The Tooth was a brilliant bite-sized selection of unsettling moments and everyday horrors. I think that it is actually to be expected when reading stories designed to be disturbing that a reader should be more affected by some than others, if only because certain ideas will make a specific person feel more uneasy than others. I felt the same also with the final story – The Intoxicated. I thought it was evocative but something was missing for me because it was a little too abstract. In her drugged up, post-op state the woman experiences dreamlike moments of confusion. I found it a little disorientating – which incidentally, is probably the point. It describes the experience of a young woman who travels to the city on her own to have her tooth extracted. The Tooth is the longest story in the book and I freely admit that I didn’t ‘get it’. The Lottery is more about community and the ability of the collective to affect the will of an individual. These two stories also centre around the behaviour of children and what they might be capable of. In Charles and The Witch the stories are set in quite an ordinary situation, but as you read on, Jackson introduces an element of unease and plants an uncomfortable idea about what might be happening. The highlights for me were the shortest stories The Lottery, Charles and The Witch. Pengin Mini Modern Classics, 2011 edition (paperback), 70 pages - own purchase.

The Tooth by Shirley Jackson