Her mother, and her mother's lover, figure strongly in the dim world of her childhood her capricious pranks and antic insolence aggravate and alienate her doctor and escapade in which she runs away to New York returns her home-battered and bruised but from it all, she emerges with a new name- and a renascent personality. Here, through her visits with her doctor in which hypnosis is both a diagnostic and therapeutic medium, are the chameleon, converging and conflicting personalities of Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy and Bess Elizabeth, who is vacuous and apathetic Beth, who is sweet and docile Betsy who is vicious and Bess who is arrogant and vulgar. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.A new novel is perhaps most reminiscent of Hangsaman (1951) and is again a curious, quixotic pursuit of the whimsies of the sick mind when Elizabeth Richmond, a plain and unobtrusive girl of 23, is 'diagnosed- after several forgetful lapses and extreme headaches- as a multiple personality. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece.

When her short story 'The Lottery' was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail it has since become one of the most iconic American stories of all time. Shirley Jackson's chilling tales of creeping unease and casual cruelty have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other.

The Bird's Nest is a macabre journey into who we are and how close we sometimes come to the brink of madness. As a tormented Elizabeth becomes two people, then three, then four, each wilder and more wicked than the last, a battle of wills threatens to destroy the girl and all who surround her.

But soon she starts to behave in ways she can neither control nor understand, to the increasing horror of her doctor and the humiliation of her self-centred aunt. The unsettling story of a young woman's descent into mental illness, from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived at the Castle.Įlizabeth Richmond is almost too quiet to be believed, with no friends, no parents and a job that leaves her strangely unnoticed.

The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson