The Bird's Nest - Shirley Jackson

 

I've read a little Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle is reviewed here) but I had no idea she wrote a novel like this.  The Bird's Nest is the tangled psyche of Elizabeth Richmond, a dull 25 year-old orphan who lives with her aunt.  She suffers from back pain and headaches so her family doctor refers her to starchy old Dr Victor Wright who fancies himself adept at psychotherapy.  Wright isn't an actual psychotherapist, you understand, just an enthusiastic dabbler.

Wright hypnotises Elizabeth and unleashes multiple personalities - Lizzie, Beth, Betsy and Bess, who - rivals with one another - unleash chaos.  The trick Jackson pulls off is to tell her story through different characters.  The mark of her genius is that she doesn't do the obvious and split the narrative through the split personalities.  No, she gives us Elizabeth herself, Betsy (the most active of the alternates), Doctor Wright (twice) and fiesty Aunt Morgen.  Moreover, only the verbose, pontificating Wright narrates in the first person.  It's very clever, beautifully done, and totally engrossing.  No wonder The Bird's Nest is a Penguin Modern Classic.

American Midnight - Laird Hunt (ed)

Nine 'Tales of the Dark' introduced by Laird Hunt, whose House in the Dark of the Woods I reviewed earlier this month.  What makes the selection son enjoyable for British readers is that these are American classics which we rarely see over here.  I had read the Chambers story before, as part of his celebrated The King in Yellow, and feel sure I must have read 'The Masque of the Red Death' but if so remembered none of it.  Anything by Edith Wharton and Shirley Jackson is always worth reading, and I had forgotten how amusing Mark Twain can be.  Overall, my favourite was 'An Itinerant House' by Emma Francis Dawson, in which the house does the haunting.  Again, there are no duds.

SF The Best of the Best Part Two - ed. Judith Merril

Had to pick this up if only for the cover and the convoluted title. These mid-Sixties anthologies are notable for the oddments you find and how elastic they are willing to make the Sci Fi genre. The best story here, 'The Wonder Horse' by George Byram, has nothing whatever to do with either Sci Fi or fantasy. The premise is entirely about natural genes and it can hardly be a fantasy because every now and then a wonder horse does come along. I'm thinking Galileo and, currently, Enable. Byram captures the race fan's reaction perfectly. Indeed it is his immersion in the detail of the racing business that makes his story so good.

Similarly there's a Shirley Jackson oddment, "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts", that just about scrapes in as fantasy, though I would be more inclined to call it a twisted tale. There's an early-to-middle period Brian Aldiss, "Let's Be Frank", which is simply a caprice, and there's the widely anthologised but nevertheless pure Sci Fi, J G Ballard's "The Sound Sweep", which I have discussed here before.

My favourites were "Nobody Bothers Gus" by Algis Budrys and "Day at the Beach" by Carol Emshwiller. Both well written, both leave as much to the imagination as they make explicit.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson, where have you been all my life.  In fairness, you've been dead for 85% of it so it's not really your fault. I blame the publishers.  I blame critics for not dragging your work regularly into the spotlight.  I blame myself.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is only a novella - Jackson made her name with a short story, 'The Lottery', and she is clearly comfortable in the short form. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the best neo-gothic or indeed American Gothic novella I have ever read.  It is a work of the highest art.  It is a work of genius.  Check out the first paragraph and weep with glee:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Every one else in my family is dead.

It's worth reading that again when you have finished the story and all has been revealed. Then you realise the forensic precision of that list, the sort of list we all put together when we are six or seven but which is bad news when created by an eighteen year old. But, as you might guess, Merricat is not an ordinary girl, her childish precocity is not normal because she's not really a child any more.

To discuss the story in any detail would be to give too much away because every sentence here is a polished precision cog in the fictional machine. Every action and incident pays off in the end.  It is, in short, a masterpiece, not only of genre but of all literature.  It is beyond a must-read.  It ought to be compulsory for anyone who dares to venture onto similar turf.  It is an object lesson and an inspiration. I loved every word.