Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson

Alison Lurie, one of America’s greatest novelists, has written a loving memoir of world-famous poet James Merrill and his longtime partner David Jackson. Drawing on her forty-year friendship with Merrill and Jackson, Lurie reveals the couple’s deep involvement with ghosts, gods, and spirits, with whom they communicated through a Ouija board. Among the results of their intense twenty-year preoccupation with the occult is the brilliant book-length poem The Changing Light at Sandover , which Merrill called his chronicles of love and loss. Recalling Merrill and Jackson’s life together in New York, Athens, and Key West, Familiar Spirits is a poignant memoir infused with great affection and generous amounts of Lurie’s signature wit.