The Road through the Wall; Hangsaman; The Bird’s Nest

This volume encompasses Shirley Jackson’s first three novels. The first, The Road Through the Wall, is an unpleasant look at suburbia. Based on her affluent hometown of Burlingame, California, the novel centers around two young women, both outsiders in a neighborhood teeming with hypocrisy and evil… Jackson’s second novel, Hangsaman, came out in 1951. In it she explored her own adolescence, following a sensitive, brilliant girl from her parents’ home off to college and through her descent into schizophrenia. Considered by many to be Jackson’s best novel, The Bird’s Nest was published in 1954. Less autobiographical than the other two, this book was based on an actual 1906 case of multiple personality disorder.