Hangsaman

Natalie Waite is seventeen and lives on the edge of her own family. Her father, Arnold, is a writer, egotistical and embittered. Her mother complains and plays the martyr. Her younger brother, Bud, has not yet felt any need to break away. Natalie watches all of them from a distance and cannot make sense of what they do.

The book opens with a Sunday afternoon cocktail party, where Arnold entertains his literary friends and neighbors. The party shows how the household works and pulls Natalie into the middle of it.

The story then follows her through the next few months at college, away from home. What happens to her there repeats, on a larger scale, the emotional failure she knew in her parents' house. She is sensitive and lonely, and the world she has landed in is not one she made.

This is the second novel by Shirley Jackson. It is a psychological novel about adolescence, with the unease and dread already present in the first pages. Tension builds steadily out of the characters and their situations, and the book moves toward a stinging, melodramatic ending. Expect a dark, bitter account of growing up rather than a gentle one.