FICTION REVIEW: Jackson, The Bird's Nest

[truepenny]

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.

Comments

[pameladean]

It's one of my favorite of Jackson's books. I still dissolve in helpless laughter when Aunt Morgan begins her rant containing the phrase, "You can subdivide like a building committee." But some of the Betsy chapters are really disturbing in that particular way Jackson has of disturbing one.

P.