Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Publisher Unknown (1969)
Description
Fiction. Horror. Literature. HTML:Shirley Jackson's chilling second novel, based on her own experiences and an actual mysterious disappearance Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn�??t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything�??even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin. Chilling and suspenseful, Hangsaman is loosely based on the real-life disappearance of a Bennington College sophomore in 1946. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning transl… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
As I was reading Shirley Jackson's 1951 novel I thought of that other novel featuring a teenage rebellion from that same year. One of the most famous literary novels published in 1951 was The Catcher in the Rye, which spent many months in the New York Times bestseller lists. Hangsaman never got
Natalia has a literary father who is intent on nurturing his daughters talents. her mother is a more vague figure in her life who cannot come to terms with her more intellectual partner and is at a point where she becomes an embarrassment to him. Natalie's father is both domineering and egotistical setting his daughter writing projects and dispensing words of wisdom most mornings in his study. Natalie is socially inept and her thoughts lead her into all sorts of strange directions: at one of her fathers literary gatherings (she and her mother are the caterers) she drinks for the first time and finds herself going for a walk in the woods with a much older man. Something may or may not have happened to Natalie that night, but the story cuts to her leaving home for college. She has trouble making friends and is content with her own space. She finds herself attached to a small group of girls who are intent on being seduced by one of their male teachers: Mr Langdon, who is already married to a former pupil Elizabeth; there are awkward social occasions and Natalie finds herself shepherding a very drunk and unhappy Elizabeth home after a cocktail party. Natalie withdraws into herself. One night she is accosted by Tony a girl friendless like herself and suddenly she has found a kindred spirit, they room together and one dark rainy night Tony leads her pied-piper like into the woods and Natalia fears for her life. The mystery is centred around how much of this is happening inside Natalie's head; Is Tony her own creation these thoughts are never fully resolved and the reader is left with a feeling of fear and apprehension for a young girl, who may have been damaged in some way.
This is a novel that becomes increasingly weird and other worldly, but Shirley Jackson makes Natalie seem real, an intelligent and confused young woman out of step with the world in which she is expected to live. Her strangely intellectual relationship with her father, the walk in the woods, the alienation with other girls in college, the thoughts that run through her head which intrude into her conscious actions all make her an outsider. The novel becomes increasingly dark and a little gothic as both the weather and Natalies sanity degrade into grey, wet, troublesome areas. The novel moves slowly towards its uncertain ending, but some fine writing and a feeling that something will happen just around the corner made this into a page turner. This is a fine achievement and probably deserves to be more well known. It has also reminded me that a survey of books from 1951 would not be complete without a re-read of The Catcher in the Rye, however I think it will need to be better than I remember to outdo my reading experience of Hangsaman 4.5 stars.
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anywhere near the best seller lists and although it appears as a penguin classic it is probably not on many peoples reading lists and it does not even make the 1001 novels you must read before you die. The Catcher in the Rye features Holden Caulfield a 17 year old young man who tells his story of an escapade in New York the previous year; Hangsaman is written in the third person and tells of 17 year old Natalia Waite's difficulties in conforming to life at home and life at an all girls college. Both novels feature the thoughts and feelings of the young adolescents who find themselves out of step with normal American teenage college life: Both Holden Caulfield and Natalia Waite have problems with relationships and their sexuality and look towards their favourite college teacher for assistance, both are disappointed. Hangsaman delves deeper into the psychology of an adolescent and while The Catcher in the Rye is a series of confrontations over a short time span Hangsaman is mysterious and dark with Natalia's inner conflicts providing a more unreliable witness to the events in her life which might be more or less what they seem. Natalia has a literary father who is intent on nurturing his daughters talents. her mother is a more vague figure in her life who cannot come to terms with her more intellectual partner and is at a point where she becomes an embarrassment to him. Natalie's father is both domineering and egotistical setting his daughter writing projects and dispensing words of wisdom most mornings in his study. Natalie is socially inept and her thoughts lead her into all sorts of strange directions: at one of her fathers literary gatherings (she and her mother are the caterers) she drinks for the first time and finds herself going for a walk in the woods with a much older man. Something may or may not have happened to Natalie that night, but the story cuts to her leaving home for college. She has trouble making friends and is content with her own space. She finds herself attached to a small group of girls who are intent on being seduced by one of their male teachers: Mr Langdon, who is already married to a former pupil Elizabeth; there are awkward social occasions and Natalie finds herself shepherding a very drunk and unhappy Elizabeth home after a cocktail party. Natalie withdraws into herself. One night she is accosted by Tony a girl friendless like herself and suddenly she has found a kindred spirit, they room together and one dark rainy night Tony leads her pied-piper like into the woods and Natalia fears for her life. The mystery is centred around how much of this is happening inside Natalie's head; Is Tony her own creation these thoughts are never fully resolved and the reader is left with a feeling of fear and apprehension for a young girl, who may have been damaged in some way.
This is a novel that becomes increasingly weird and other worldly, but Shirley Jackson makes Natalie seem real, an intelligent and confused young woman out of step with the world in which she is expected to live. Her strangely intellectual relationship with her father, the walk in the woods, the alienation with other girls in college, the thoughts that run through her head which intrude into her conscious actions all make her an outsider. The novel becomes increasingly dark and a little gothic as both the weather and Natalies sanity degrade into grey, wet, troublesome areas. The novel moves slowly towards its uncertain ending, but some fine writing and a feeling that something will happen just around the corner made this into a page turner. This is a fine achievement and probably deserves to be more well known. It has also reminded me that a survey of books from 1951 would not be complete without a re-read of The Catcher in the Rye, however I think it will need to be better than I remember to outdo my reading experience of Hangsaman 4.5 stars.
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LibraryThing member thorold
This looks superficially like a standard teenage coming-of-age novel: 17-year-old Natalie goes off to college as the first step on her quest to become a writer and an autonomous human being, rather than a mere extension of her parents. The other girls are there for purely social reasons and don't
But Jackson evidently doesn't like formulas: the book is determinedly eccentric in all kinds of ways. It's written in the third person, in a precise, elegant, but slightly mad literary style — rather as George Eliot might write after her third Martini. And where every coming-of-age novel pivots on a moment of sexual self-discovery, this novel is made to pivot on two "Malabar Caves"-type moments of we-don't-know-what. Natalie goes into the woods with a man in her parents garden, and she goes into the woods with Girl Tony near the abandoned amusement park. On neither occasion are we told what — if anything — happened, but she comes out a different person both times. Indeed, we're never quite allowed to be sure that Girl Tony exists outside Natalie's own mind.
Natalie is entirely clear-sighted about the subtle mismatches in the world around her: everyone is busy telling clever girls how much potential they have and what wonderful opportunities there are in front of them, but as far as the eye can see the only role-models are clever girls who have run into the sand, married too young to faculty members (or to Natalie's father) and living out their stupefyingly boring days in an alcoholic haze, serving cocktails at parties where their husbands flirt with the next generation of clever girls. The men are allowed to carry on in their Mr Bennet delusion that the world exists purely for their own entertainment, and never for a moment notice that they are tyrannising the families they love so dearly.
But then there are also mismatches in Natalie's own mind. Does she actually have any solid reason to suppose that she is Natalie Wade, she asks herself whenever she has to tell someone her name. Couldn't she just as well be someone else, or no-one at all?
A clever, witty, slightly puzzling book, beautifully written by someone who obviously knew exactly what she was doing with her typewriter at all times, and had a very clear ear for other people's language.
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like her, but she eventually hooks up with a couple of other outcasts: a bored young faculty-wife who drinks too much, and the rebellious Girl Tony, who flits in and out of other people's rooms in the dark and helps herself to what she needs. But Jackson evidently doesn't like formulas: the book is determinedly eccentric in all kinds of ways. It's written in the third person, in a precise, elegant, but slightly mad literary style — rather as George Eliot might write after her third Martini. And where every coming-of-age novel pivots on a moment of sexual self-discovery, this novel is made to pivot on two "Malabar Caves"-type moments of we-don't-know-what. Natalie goes into the woods with a man in her parents garden, and she goes into the woods with Girl Tony near the abandoned amusement park. On neither occasion are we told what — if anything — happened, but she comes out a different person both times. Indeed, we're never quite allowed to be sure that Girl Tony exists outside Natalie's own mind.
Natalie is entirely clear-sighted about the subtle mismatches in the world around her: everyone is busy telling clever girls how much potential they have and what wonderful opportunities there are in front of them, but as far as the eye can see the only role-models are clever girls who have run into the sand, married too young to faculty members (or to Natalie's father) and living out their stupefyingly boring days in an alcoholic haze, serving cocktails at parties where their husbands flirt with the next generation of clever girls. The men are allowed to carry on in their Mr Bennet delusion that the world exists purely for their own entertainment, and never for a moment notice that they are tyrannising the families they love so dearly.
But then there are also mismatches in Natalie's own mind. Does she actually have any solid reason to suppose that she is Natalie Wade, she asks herself whenever she has to tell someone her name. Couldn't she just as well be someone else, or no-one at all?
A clever, witty, slightly puzzling book, beautifully written by someone who obviously knew exactly what she was doing with her typewriter at all times, and had a very clear ear for other people's language.
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LibraryThing member Smiler69
Edit: This was not a an actual review, but a very emotional and troubled response to what was an experience rather than a proper reading. I felt this book viscerally more than just read it. I wish I'd kept at distance from it so I could have appreciated it more. I've read a couple of reviews that
I’ve just finished this book and find myself deeply disturbed by it. I’ve read quite a few of Shirley Jackson’s novels and stories by now and never been as spooked as I have been by this one. A young woman, still just a girl, with an overbearing detestable writer father who is determined to mold her in his image and who sends her (unprotesting) to the college of his choosing is how I would describe the story in one sentence. The rest you can get from the publishers blurb. From the first lines of the novel there are clear signs that Natalie doesn’t simply have an “overactive imagination”, but that she is probably experiencing schizophrenic dissociative episodes, with ongoing elaborate fantasies of having committed a horrible crime. With such a mentally damaging father and a mother who has escaped into the numbing effects of alcohol, our girl seems to be left without defenses and things can’t possibly go well for her from here, and of course, they don’t.
When she enters the all-girls college, predictably enough, she finds an even more hostile environment of cliques and hazings and not so subtle put-downs and she mostly isolates herself, and soon enough her flights of fancy take over and she become completely disconnected from reality with greater and greater frequency. This makes for some very interesting reading of the “Through the Looking Glass” variety and I have a strong intuition no author could come up with such original material without being cracked to begin with. That is probably one of the things that attracts me so much to dear Shirley, that I recognize the kindred spirit of one who uses those dark places to feed her creativity.
So far I’ve been rather amused by Jackson’s writings, even (and especially) the nastier bits have made me chuckle, but here were echoes of true and terrifying madness... because utterly beyond comprehension. Was her friend Tony for example, encountered towards the latter part of the story, and with whom she formed an obsessive, and possibility sapphic bond, actually real? I don’t know if this question has been raised before, but I felt like our Natalie was so confused and miserable by then that she may no longer have been able to tell truth from her own fiction any longer.
For my part, the only time I’ve ever felt quite this disturbed by a novel... I mean felt this particular register of disturbance, was when I read The Bell Jar at age sixteen or seventeen and was completely horrified to see a young woman just as, or possibly even more confused and crazy than me putting down her thoughts in book form. With Hangsaman, it felt like revisiting all those parts of a dreadfully painful, unmedicated adolescence and just how dangerous I felt I was to myself then... almost miraculously surviving those years against the odds, and how merciless the world was and continues to be to people who are as badly equipped to deal with the harsh realities of this world.
How to rate a book that ended up making me feel so wretched?! I found it brilliant and completely relatable for the most part, and then it took me to places I swore never to return to, for I vowed never to read The Bell Jar again for how lingering it’s oppressive effect proved to be for me, plunging me into a dark and lasting depression. This was a completely different story of course, but just as confusing somehow. Thank heavens I’ve gained much in maturity in the intervening three decades or so and have learned how to live and survive with the Black Dog, since he chooses to be in residence on a rather regular basis.
For anyone NOT suffering from an actual mental illness I suppose it might simply be an interesting and somewhat spooky ride into how scary the transition from childhood to womanhood can be. Once again, kudos to Shirley Jackson for never pulling any punches! —November 27, 2018
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made me appreciate it better, and I'm thankful for that. My perspective on it is definitely skewed, so you really shouldn't base your decision on it to decide whether you should read it or not.I’ve just finished this book and find myself deeply disturbed by it. I’ve read quite a few of Shirley Jackson’s novels and stories by now and never been as spooked as I have been by this one. A young woman, still just a girl, with an overbearing detestable writer father who is determined to mold her in his image and who sends her (unprotesting) to the college of his choosing is how I would describe the story in one sentence. The rest you can get from the publishers blurb. From the first lines of the novel there are clear signs that Natalie doesn’t simply have an “overactive imagination”, but that she is probably experiencing schizophrenic dissociative episodes, with ongoing elaborate fantasies of having committed a horrible crime. With such a mentally damaging father and a mother who has escaped into the numbing effects of alcohol, our girl seems to be left without defenses and things can’t possibly go well for her from here, and of course, they don’t.
When she enters the all-girls college, predictably enough, she finds an even more hostile environment of cliques and hazings and not so subtle put-downs and she mostly isolates herself, and soon enough her flights of fancy take over and she become completely disconnected from reality with greater and greater frequency. This makes for some very interesting reading of the “Through the Looking Glass” variety and I have a strong intuition no author could come up with such original material without being cracked to begin with. That is probably one of the things that attracts me so much to dear Shirley, that I recognize the kindred spirit of one who uses those dark places to feed her creativity.
So far I’ve been rather amused by Jackson’s writings, even (and especially) the nastier bits have made me chuckle, but here were echoes of true and terrifying madness... because utterly beyond comprehension. Was her friend Tony for example, encountered towards the latter part of the story, and with whom she formed an obsessive, and possibility sapphic bond, actually real? I don’t know if this question has been raised before, but I felt like our Natalie was so confused and miserable by then that she may no longer have been able to tell truth from her own fiction any longer.
For my part, the only time I’ve ever felt quite this disturbed by a novel... I mean felt this particular register of disturbance, was when I read The Bell Jar at age sixteen or seventeen and was completely horrified to see a young woman just as, or possibly even more confused and crazy than me putting down her thoughts in book form. With Hangsaman, it felt like revisiting all those parts of a dreadfully painful, unmedicated adolescence and just how dangerous I felt I was to myself then... almost miraculously surviving those years against the odds, and how merciless the world was and continues to be to people who are as badly equipped to deal with the harsh realities of this world.
How to rate a book that ended up making me feel so wretched?! I found it brilliant and completely relatable for the most part, and then it took me to places I swore never to return to, for I vowed never to read The Bell Jar again for how lingering it’s oppressive effect proved to be for me, plunging me into a dark and lasting depression. This was a completely different story of course, but just as confusing somehow. Thank heavens I’ve gained much in maturity in the intervening three decades or so and have learned how to live and survive with the Black Dog, since he chooses to be in residence on a rather regular basis.
For anyone NOT suffering from an actual mental illness I suppose it might simply be an interesting and somewhat spooky ride into how scary the transition from childhood to womanhood can be. Once again, kudos to Shirley Jackson for never pulling any punches! —November 27, 2018
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LibraryThing member ocgreg34
Natalie Waite prefers to live in the world created by her imagination, one in which she rules the forest or deflects questions from a determined police detective who tries in vain to make her crack. Instead, she drifts through the days leading to her departure for college, enduring her father's --
Shirley Jackson's novel presents the turmoil a young seventeen-year-old girl feels, dealing with family and with the first few months on her own at an all-girls college. Natalie questions her own place in the school, wanting to fit in and to be noticed by the other, seemingly more popular girls while at the same time afraid to do anything to draw attention to her self. I remember my own first few months at college, feeling the same way, wanting so hard to mingle with new people and a new place but not knowing how to go about it, and Ms. Jackson does a fine job capturing that awkward period.
For me the strong point of "Hangsaman" are the characters. From Natalie's father, Arnold Waite, a published author who seems to delight in pointing out his daughter's flaws with her writing and casually putting down his wife with little statements here and there; her mother, who seems to have fallen into the dutiful wife role while trying to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did; to Professor Arnold Langdon who recently married one of his students and now finds her intolerable, wanting instead to flirt with more of the girls in his classes; and Tony, another outcast much like herself with whom Natalie finds a common bond but which turns sinister -- all the characters are strong, definite presences, each either aiding or thwarting Natalie as she wends her way through college.
As for the story itself, I found it difficult to follow. Early in the novel, Natalie attends against a dinner party thrown by her father with a number of supposedly important literary figures from the area and other notables. Toward the end of the party, Natalie wanders into the woods near her home and finds herself confronted by a male guest from the party. They talk for a few pages, then Natalie wakes up thinking about the awful night she had, almost wondering if it happened at all. But nothing's ever divulged about what happened. And later on, something happens between the girl Tony and Natalie, but it's never explained, and the story continues as if it were common knowledge. These apparent gaps left me scratching my head and re-reading sections to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I felt that throughout much of the book, this sense that something wasn't being told completely so I was never quite sure that the story was whole and complete.
It wasn't quite what I expected from Ms. Jackson, after having read "The Haunting of Hill House" and "The Road Through the Wall". For Shirley Jackson fans, I think this would be a good book to read, if only because of the characters.
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a published author -- minor criticisms of her writing and patiently listening to her mother's household woes and warnings.Shirley Jackson's novel presents the turmoil a young seventeen-year-old girl feels, dealing with family and with the first few months on her own at an all-girls college. Natalie questions her own place in the school, wanting to fit in and to be noticed by the other, seemingly more popular girls while at the same time afraid to do anything to draw attention to her self. I remember my own first few months at college, feeling the same way, wanting so hard to mingle with new people and a new place but not knowing how to go about it, and Ms. Jackson does a fine job capturing that awkward period.
For me the strong point of "Hangsaman" are the characters. From Natalie's father, Arnold Waite, a published author who seems to delight in pointing out his daughter's flaws with her writing and casually putting down his wife with little statements here and there; her mother, who seems to have fallen into the dutiful wife role while trying to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did; to Professor Arnold Langdon who recently married one of his students and now finds her intolerable, wanting instead to flirt with more of the girls in his classes; and Tony, another outcast much like herself with whom Natalie finds a common bond but which turns sinister -- all the characters are strong, definite presences, each either aiding or thwarting Natalie as she wends her way through college.
As for the story itself, I found it difficult to follow. Early in the novel, Natalie attends against a dinner party thrown by her father with a number of supposedly important literary figures from the area and other notables. Toward the end of the party, Natalie wanders into the woods near her home and finds herself confronted by a male guest from the party. They talk for a few pages, then Natalie wakes up thinking about the awful night she had, almost wondering if it happened at all. But nothing's ever divulged about what happened. And later on, something happens between the girl Tony and Natalie, but it's never explained, and the story continues as if it were common knowledge. These apparent gaps left me scratching my head and re-reading sections to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I felt that throughout much of the book, this sense that something wasn't being told completely so I was never quite sure that the story was whole and complete.
It wasn't quite what I expected from Ms. Jackson, after having read "The Haunting of Hill House" and "The Road Through the Wall". For Shirley Jackson fans, I think this would be a good book to read, if only because of the characters.
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LibraryThing member Sean191
I'm glad that I read [The Lottery] and [We Have Always Lived in the Castle] prior to this. If I had read this first and knew nothing of Jackson, I don't know if I would have given her a chance. I was bored and couldn't care less about the characters. I only finished because I was hoping for a great
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ending such as I've known her for - but it fell far short of what would have made the rest of the book worth reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member kgib
Many good Shirley Jackson elements that add up to very little.
LibraryThing member CarlosMcRey
When I first finished this novel, I was left with the feeling of, what the heck just happened? This was a combination of reading the last fifth or so, where the story takes an interesting turn, during a fit of insomnia, which helped contribute to the sense that the story had gone off the rails.
Hangsaman tells the story of seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite as she leaves home to start college. Natalie is smart and literate--it is unclear to what extent her own literary ambitions are the result of her father's own self-absorption--and she feels out of place at college. She is befriended by the wife of one of her professors, who was herself a student only a few years beforehand, as well as the professor himself, though Natalie is not the only student he has befriended. (And this is an all-women's college.) Finally, Natalie befriends another student, with whom she finds a special bond.
Though Natalie is no Merrikat, she's an engaging protagonist, and Jackson's talent for depicting a social sphere laced with anxiety is as sharp as always. For the majority of the novel, Natalie just seems a little out of place, not sure how to maneuver the world in which she moves, lonely and alienated. And at the end, with her special friendship, there is a sense of something slipping in her relation to the world, and suddenly the novel takes on the feel of one of Ms. Jackson's short stories, where the reality of the situation is indeterminate, unnerving. It was a little jarring at first, though it does leave the book off in a very eerie place.
Overall, I'd have to say I rank this below We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, or even the lesser-known The Sundial, but it still has some intriguing characters, sharp dialogue and wonderful writing. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Shirley Jackson--in fact, feeling like a bit of a Jackson completist myself, I am not sure it would be fair to recommend it to anyone not already under her spell to some extent--but it has enough of that eerie magic one can expect from her work.
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However, in the couple of days since finishing it, the turn in the story has begun to seem less jarring and more haunting. (I wonder how many of the people who fired off angry letters to the New Yorker in reaction to Jackson's The Lottery found themselves pulled under its spell only a couple of days afterwards.)Hangsaman tells the story of seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite as she leaves home to start college. Natalie is smart and literate--it is unclear to what extent her own literary ambitions are the result of her father's own self-absorption--and she feels out of place at college. She is befriended by the wife of one of her professors, who was herself a student only a few years beforehand, as well as the professor himself, though Natalie is not the only student he has befriended. (And this is an all-women's college.) Finally, Natalie befriends another student, with whom she finds a special bond.
Though Natalie is no Merrikat, she's an engaging protagonist, and Jackson's talent for depicting a social sphere laced with anxiety is as sharp as always. For the majority of the novel, Natalie just seems a little out of place, not sure how to maneuver the world in which she moves, lonely and alienated. And at the end, with her special friendship, there is a sense of something slipping in her relation to the world, and suddenly the novel takes on the feel of one of Ms. Jackson's short stories, where the reality of the situation is indeterminate, unnerving. It was a little jarring at first, though it does leave the book off in a very eerie place.
Overall, I'd have to say I rank this below We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, or even the lesser-known The Sundial, but it still has some intriguing characters, sharp dialogue and wonderful writing. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Shirley Jackson--in fact, feeling like a bit of a Jackson completist myself, I am not sure it would be fair to recommend it to anyone not already under her spell to some extent--but it has enough of that eerie magic one can expect from her work.
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LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
Shirley Jackson, during her too-short career, produced some of the most truly frightening tales ever printed in the English language.
Hangsaman, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.
This incredibly dense and almost motionless tale focuses on Natalie Waite, a 17-year-old college freshman whose home
Ultimately, she makes the acquaintance of another very odd student, and the last 20 pages or so trace a schoolgirl romp turned menacing – the only really frightening part of the book, as Natalie’s hold on reality seems to begin slipping further. Then there’s an odd resolution which may or may not have any meaning.
There are also vague allusions to sexuality, which could probably not have been made more specific, given the book's 1951 publication date. But it appears that Natalie may have been sexually assaulted at a family cocktail party before leaving for college, and her relationship with the mysterious Tony later in the book has an air that certainly could be interpreted as homosexual in nature.
All in all, a really unsatisfying read, and a major disappointment to readers who expect more from Jackson.
Hangsaman, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.
This incredibly dense and almost motionless tale focuses on Natalie Waite, a 17-year-old college freshman whose home
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life is undeniably … off. Her mother is a spiritless shadow, self-effacing and inarticulate, her younger brother seems to have little to do with the story other than to balance out the four-person family, and her father is a swaggering little despot, sure of his own intellectual superiority and almost vampiric in his attentions to Natalie. It’s no surprise that when she goes away to the college daddy has picked for her, that she finds it difficult to make friends and finds herself drawn into yet another unhealthy relationship with one of her instructors -– a man whose hollow self-importance is equal to her own father’s.Ultimately, she makes the acquaintance of another very odd student, and the last 20 pages or so trace a schoolgirl romp turned menacing – the only really frightening part of the book, as Natalie’s hold on reality seems to begin slipping further. Then there’s an odd resolution which may or may not have any meaning.
There are also vague allusions to sexuality, which could probably not have been made more specific, given the book's 1951 publication date. But it appears that Natalie may have been sexually assaulted at a family cocktail party before leaving for college, and her relationship with the mysterious Tony later in the book has an air that certainly could be interpreted as homosexual in nature.
All in all, a really unsatisfying read, and a major disappointment to readers who expect more from Jackson.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
This is a weird book, in the very best sense of the word. Natalie Waite is a young woman about to go off to college. We are introduced to her in her family setting, with her intellectual and domineering father, her boring and normal mother, and her unimportant brother. All of these descriptives are
At first her mind seems "normal" in the sense of being quirky but I thought that most readers would identify, especially if they remember the teenage years, the fantasizing and odd thoughts that come to mind at that formative age. When Natalie goes off to her small liberal arts college and is faced with living with hundreds of other young women of varying character and morals, things devolve quickly. She develops an odd relationship with a girl named Tony (I actually couldn't tell if Tony was real or imaginary) and things get weirder and weirder.
I loved it.
The book isn't scary, but it's slightly creepy to witness someone's mind changing (disintegrating?) so rapidly. This book deserves to be talked about as much as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson's more famous novels.
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Natalie's point of view because there is no escaping Natalie's point of view in the book. Though it's not told in first person, there is almost no difference between the omniscient narrator and Natalie's point of view. It's an extremely interior book. And Natalie has a weird mind. At first her mind seems "normal" in the sense of being quirky but I thought that most readers would identify, especially if they remember the teenage years, the fantasizing and odd thoughts that come to mind at that formative age. When Natalie goes off to her small liberal arts college and is faced with living with hundreds of other young women of varying character and morals, things devolve quickly. She develops an odd relationship with a girl named Tony (I actually couldn't tell if Tony was real or imaginary) and things get weirder and weirder.
I loved it.
The book isn't scary, but it's slightly creepy to witness someone's mind changing (disintegrating?) so rapidly. This book deserves to be talked about as much as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson's more famous novels.
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LibraryThing member BooksCatsEtc
Well written, but very disturbing. I think this is the only book of Jackson's that I won't read more than once.
LibraryThing member noblechicken
A most oddly staged story, loosely based on the disappearance of teenager Paula Jean Welden, in Vermont in 1946. An internal decent into madness that Jackson does so well.
LibraryThing member noblechicken
A most oddly staged story, loosely based on the disappearance of teenager Paula Jean Welden, in Vermont in 1946. An internal decent into madness that Jackson does so well.
LibraryThing member DrApple
A disconcerting book. Hangsaman focuses on a young woman who leaves home to go to college. She has an active imagination before she leaves home, but after arriving at college, and finding herself alienated and alone, her imagination takes over to the point where neither she nor the reader is sure
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what actually is happening and what is in her imagination, Show Less
LibraryThing member megbmore
I read this after watching the biopic Shirley, which fictionalizes the period in which the novella was written. Together, they create a compelling portrait of the writer.
Original publication date
1951
Other editions
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (Paperback)