Hangsaman
"Little Natalie, never rest until you have uncovered your essential self. Remember that. Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts, is a clean pure being made of radiant colours."
As she prepares to go to college, Natalie Waite is worried by the expectations of her overbearing father and fears that she might not escape the fate of her unhappy mother.
The arcane rituals and superficiality of the girls at college are alien to her, while her professors and their wives remind Natalie of her parents. To overcome her sense of being an outsider, she draws on her fantasy life. A strange friendship with another student brings the excitement that she craves but leads her into increasing danger.
Hangsaman is suffused with the unease of early adulthood as well as Shirley Jackson's unique ability to draw out the darkness in the everyday.