FICTION REVIEW: Jackson, The Bird's Nest

I have been trying to review this book for a week, and I just have nothing to say about it. It's Shirley Jackson, so it's beautifully written and quirky, and it may suffer from seventy years of the trope of Multiple Personality Disorder (which properly these days is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but the TROPE is definitely MPD) so that it doesn't feel like there's anything particularly new or fresh about, oh look, the protagonist has MPD and that's why all these weird things are happening to her.

So if you like Jackson, it was an excellent read. I think it also qualifies as the most mainstream of her books: it HAS a plot (and chapters even!) with a mystery that has a solution, and even a happy ending. I certainly enjoyed it.

FICTION REVIEW: Jackson, The Sundial

Like Gormenghast, only funny.

There's a giant house, a cast of horrible people, a louring sense of doom--but Jackson's characters are self-aware and given to witty dialogue. Even the dreadful Orianna Halloran has a sense of humor about herself.

The book is a series of scenes and set pieces (like the amazing garden party at the end), strung together on the premise that the end of the world is coming and only the people in the house will be saved. As in The Road through the Wall, at the very end there is a murder, and this time it's abundantly clear that Jackson has set the mystery up to be insoluble--or to have any solution you please. It might be any of the characters; she deliberately sets the murder when people are dressing for dinner--I mean, the end of the world--so no one has an alibi, and almost all the characters have very good motives for wanting the victim dead. As this makes obvious, the book is also a parody of the country house murder mystery--entirely focused on the ensemble of suspects and not providing a detective at all.

I loved this book.