The Bird's Nest

by Shirley Jackson

Hardcover, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Amereon Ltd (1993), Hardcover

Description

Shirley Jackson's third novel, a chilling descent into multiple personalities Elizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old wiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother's inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible migraines and backaches, her aunt takes her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist. But slowly, and with Jackson's characteristic chill, we learn that Elizabeth is not just one girl--but four separate, self-destructive personalities. The Bird's Nest, Jackson's third novel, develops hallmarks of the horror master's most unsettling work: tormented heroines, riveting familial mysteries, and a disquieting vision inside the human mind. 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 translators.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member japaul22

I randomly stumbled upon a biography of Shirley Jackson while I was picking up a hold from the library and it immediately reminded me that I should get back to reading her work. I ordered the last 3 novels of hers that I hadn't read and started with The Bird's Nest.

This book is about Elizabeth, a

young woman who is disturbed to find a large hole in her museum office when the building is being remodeled. The destruction of her work space seems to set off, or at least parallel, a mental breakdown. In fact, Elizabeth is also Beth, Betsy, and Bess - her alternate personalities. She lives with her Aunt Morgen - there is some mystery as to what happened to her mother - and Aunt Morgen gets her set up with a psychiatrist, Dr. Wright.

As with all of the Jackson novels I've read, the writing is just perfect. Subtle and clear and precise. And the creepy factor is always there, below the surface of what could appear normal. I was a little annoyed that the (male) doctor's voice becomes prevalent for a while in the middle of the book, and I felt like (female) Elizabeth was being overshadowed, but Jackson brings things back around to her women characters satisfactorily.

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LibraryThing member KLmesoftly

I'm a big Jackson fan but had previously only read her easier-to-find later works, so it's exciting to have gotten my hands finally on a couple of the recent Penguin reprints of her early novels! Anyone who has read The Haunting of Hill House can speak to Jackson's love for picking up genre tropes

and doing something subtle and twisted with them, and The Bird's Nest deals with a woman who has multiple personality disorder and her pompous, self-absorbed therapist. It has a lot of Shirley Jackson's favorite elements - the twisted familial backstories drawn out slowly page by page via insinuation and sideways reference, the upstanding members of society shown to be just as neurotic and bankrupt from a certain angle as the derelict...it's ultimately a bit pulpier than her enduring classics but was still well worth the read, and surprisingly hilarious at points in ways I don't expect from her!

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LibraryThing member lee-mervin

An enthralling black comedy about the disintegration of a young woman's mind into 4 warring personalities,

LibraryThing member sturlington

The Bird's Nest is a psychological thriller about a woman, Elizabeth, with multiple personalities, written well before that became a cliche. Quite weird and disorienting, this novel reminded me most of Hangsaman--not instantly a favorite, but a book that gets under your skin. As usual for Jackson,

there is not really a likable character--she skewers everyone--and the reader is left a bit unsure as to what has happened. I found the ending quite chilling, though. While her pompous psychiatrist aims to combine all her personalities into one whole person, what she becomes instead is a non-person, without a name, even--completely effaced.

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LibraryThing member AngelaJMaher

This is not a book that can be considered an easy read, nor one to sit and relax with. It's complex and twisting and needs your full attention. An intriguing read.

LibraryThing member arubabookwoman

This is Shirley Jackson's "multiple personality" book. Elizabeth lives with her aunt Morgen, and works at a clerical job at the museum. When she starts having severe headaches and multiple blackouts, her aunt sends her to Dr. Wright. Through the course of her therapy with Dr. Wright, we meet, in

addition to Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy and Bess. Each of the distinct personalities is incomplete and broken, but Elizabeth is somehow enduring since she is the one who remains behind to carry on and clean up the messes left by the others.
I found this to be rather dated and very much of its time. I didn't enjoy it as much as I've like other books I've read by Shirley Jackson, but by all means go for it if the subject interests you.
(I remember devouring the multiple personality book Sybil 35 or 40 years ago. I was never compelled to pick this one up, and had to force myself to finish it.)

2 stars

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LibraryThing member TheGalaxyGirl

I first read this when I was, I think, in middle school, and was enthralled with the more sensational aspects of the story and its depiction of multiple personality disorder. Reading it now, thirty-plus years later, I was really taken with the skill Jackson shows in sketching out the characters,

the individual character voices, the biting social satire, and the unexpected dry humor which had me laughing out loud--surprisingly, because this is not a funny book. The humor comes out of the completely over the top, and yet completely human reactions of the characters one to another.

The writing is tight and precise, and yet there is a mystery at the center that is never quite fully explained: what exactly happened to Elizabeth's mother, and what happened with, or to, Robin? There's suggestion and innuendo, from unreliable narrators, but no clarity. The ending is also ambiguous, when Elizabeth, after all her treatment, is somehow left as something less than the sum of her parts.

There's no heroes or villains in this story, only authentic humans with all their faults and foibles, and Jackson makes us feel sympathy for the most unlikable characters. In my opinion, Shirley Jackson is one of the most sadly overlooked authors in the American canon.

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