The Bird's Nest
"dear lizzie...your fools paradise is gone now for good watch out for me lizzie watch out for me"
Elizabeth Richmond is a demure twenty-three-year-old whiling 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, Aunt Morgen takes her to see Dr. Wright, a psychologist with some unusual techniques. Slowly, and with Shirley Jackson's characteristic chill, we learn that Elizabeth is not just one girl - but four separate and competing self-destructive personalities. The Bird's Nest, Jackson's third novel, develops hallmarks of the horror master's most unsettling work: a tormented heroine, a riveting familial mystery, and a disquieting view inside the human mind.
"Shirley Jackson's best novel...Brilliant, swift, at times immensely funny, and alternately frightening." - Chicago Tribune
"Undeniably brilliant...superlative entertainment." - New York Herald Tribune