The Bird's Nest By Shirley Jackson (Paperback, 2014)

Product Description

The unsettling story of a young woman's descent into mental illness from the author of The Haunting of Hill House & We Have Always Lived at the Castle ' An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman Elizabeth Richmond is almost too quiet to be believed with no friends no parents & a job that leaves her strangely unnoticed But soon she starts to behave in ways she can neither control nor understand to the increasing horror of her doctor & the humiliation of her self-centred aunt As a tormented Elizabeth becomes two people then three then four each wilder & more wicked than the last a battle of wills threatens to destroy the girl & all who surround her The Bird's Nest is a macabre journey into who we are & how close we sometimes come to the brink of madness Shirley Jackson's chilling tales of creeping unease & casual cruelty have the power to unsettle & terrify unlike any other She was born in California in 1916 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 Her first novel The Road Through the Wall was published in the same year & was followed by five more Hangsaman The Bird's Nest The Sundial The Haunting of Hill House & We Have Always Lived in the Castle widely seen as her masterpiece Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48 ' The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie & unforgettable It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny & clear there is always the threat of darkness looming of things taking a turn for the worse'
- A M Homes Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written quiet cumulative shudders'
- Dorothy Parker ' Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic inimitable writers whose work exerts an enduring spell'
- Joyce Carol Oates