#hangsaman

[domithanasia]

how it feels to read a shirley jackson novel that makes you so devastatingly anguished you genuinely feel like you have mere hours to live

[bookmatter]

Hangsaman, Shirley Jackson

[megairea]

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman, 1951

[derangedrhythms]

[...] such delicious sense of possession.

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman

[mossyshadows]

No point in speaking, no reasonable thing to say. It had all been debated endlessly in the second between her mother's drawn-in breath and Natalie's involuntary movement that checked it. Her mother had almost said, "Natalie, are you happy?" and Natalie had almost said, "No"; her mother had almost said, "Everything seems somehow to go badly," and Natalie had almost said, "I know it and I can't help it"; her mother had almost said, "Let me help you," and Natalie had almost said, "What can you do?" and that had been the nervous movement of her head that her mother had recognized and which had silenced her before she ever spoke.

Hangsaman, Shirley Jackson

[hangsawoman]

tramp stamp that says Somewhere there is something waiting for you, and you can smile a little perhaps now when you are so unhappy, because how well we both know that you will be happy very very very very soon. Somewhere someone is waiting for you, and loves you, and thinks you are beautiful, and it will be so wonderful and so fine, and if you can be patient and wait and never never never never despair, because despair might spoil it, you will come there, someday, and the gates will open and you will pass through, and no one will be able to come in unless you let them, and no one can even see you. Someday, someone, somewhere. Natalie, please

[maryblackwood]

[laurapalmersdeathparade]

"All I need," said Tony, "is a desire so strong that the world, all of the world, has got to bend itself and forget itself and break out of its circles and rock itself crazy, all to do what I want, and there's got to be a great crash when the ground under me crashes itself wide open and the fire inside is forced to crawl away from my feet and the sky too turns back so that there is nothing above me and nothing below me and nothing in all time except me and what I want."

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman