The Bird's Nest

The Bird's Nest - Shirley Jackson

The prospect of Shirley Jackson directly addressing a subject she often played with in her other novels was too much to pass up. When I heard that Penguin was finally reissuing her early novels, 'The Bird's Nest' was the one I was most looking forward to.

The novel begins with the meek Elizabeth Richmond working her genteel clerical job at the museum and offending nobody, until she receives a strange, taunting letter. Soon she is swallowed up, and her Aunt and her acquaintances simply aren't equipped to intercede.

Jackson's character sketches are wicked. The boilerplate suburban Arrows, Aunt Morgan's "handsome" manner and aggressively modern art collection, and the blow-hard Dr. Wright, are perfect foils for Elizabeth and her sisters. Some of the concepts that Wright wrestled with might be out-dated (not to mention his personal opinions on ladies - something Jackson was clearly aware of) but it didn't detract from my interest in the novel.

This comes off as a straight-forward psychological thriller with little of the supernatural doubt that her later novels played with, but this is as strong a work in her canon as any I've come across.