The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson Review

So I’ve been reading Shirley Jackson’s early novels and they’ve been surprisingly awful. But I know she becomes a great novelist eventually because I love The Haunting of Hill House, and her masterpiece, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, so I thought the early novels were on an upwards trajectory - The Road Through the Wall was dismal, Hangsaman was still terrible but better; The Bird’s Nest would be ok… wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately no! This is as bad as The Road Through the Wall but I would put it even lower because at least that novel had something happen at the end - it was stupid but it was something. Nothing happens at the end of The Bird’s Nest - it’s so utterly tedious from start to finish!

The novel is about a young woman called Elizabeth Richmond with multiple personality disorder. She lives with her long-suffering Aunt Morgen and she works with a Dr. Wright (whom she waggishly calls Doctor Wrong - har har!) to resolve her personalities into one.

Most of the novel is made up of discussions between Elizabeth and Wright as she cycles in and out of the personalities - Betsy is the evil one, Beth is the innocent child, Bess is… whatever, and I think there’s a fourth (it’s honestly so boring that I barely cared enough to note who was who); just talking, talking about nothing. And it’s pointless too because the multiple personalities are resolved without the doctor’s help!

Nothing else really happens. Elizabeth goes on a trip to the big city then comes back. Not much stood out to me. There’s a bit at the start where she was working at the museum that was mildly interesting - she sees a giant hole near her desk, that seems ominous, and starts receiving threatening letters. Both are clearly emblematic of her illness, once you find out she has multiple personality disorder. A sketchy old woman on the bus in the city tries to steal her money. It’s a pitifully small offering of engaging moments for an entire novel.

There were elements here that could have been interesting: the evil personality doing something truly evil, aka murder, (the worst she does is put mud in the fridge!), the inheritance money that Aunt Morgen is apparently scheming to take from Elizabeth. But Jackson doesn’t do anything with them. They’re introduced, go nowhere and ultimately mean nothing - really weak storytelling.

I’m not sure if the story was, per Jackson’s reputation today, meant to be horrific (it wasn’t anyway) but I didn’t think much of the psychology aspects either. A scene near the end - where Elizabeth is cycling in and out of personalities by the sentence - felt more farcical than anything, and the psychological resolution is feeble.

The Bird’s Nest is an unimpressive, persistently uninteresting and irritatingly dreary novel. I’ve read almost all of Shirley Jackson’s novels now and this is definitely the worst of the bunch. Avoid the early books and stick with the later, more overtly horror, novels instead.