Hangsaman

Name: Hangsaman
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Author: Shirley Jackson
ISBN: 9780593555125

Author: Shirley Jackson

Narrator: Julia Whelan

Unabridged: 8 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 10/19/2021

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Psychological, Horror

Synopsis

Shirley Jackson's chilling second novel, based on her own experiences and an actual mysterious disappearance

Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn’t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything—even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin. Chilling and suspenseful, Hangsaman is loosely based on the real-life disappearance of a Bennington College sophomore in 1946.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About The Author

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) received wide critical acclaim for her short story “The Lottery,” which was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. Her works available from Penguin Classics include We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, and Come Along with Me and Life Among the Savages available from Penguin.Francine Prose is the bestselling author of more than twenty books and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on July 18, 2024

honestly scared of what i'll become when i've read everything by shirley jackson. this was a slow start but was eventually eerie and captivating and really no one has ever done it like she has!!! it's scary how accurate this is to the college experience in spite of being a bajillion years old and horr......more

Goodreads review by Sasha on October 04, 2023

Shirley Jackson writes mysteries where the mystery is, do you live in a sane world? Is it mad? Is there magic? Is it good or bad magic? Natalie Waite isn't sure she exists at all:Or even suppose, imagine, could it be true? that she was confined, locked away, pounding wildly against the bars on the wi......more

Goodreads review by Aniko on July 04, 2014

I have never read anything like HANGSAMAN. It is chilling, hyper-surreal, and told with a mind-altering narrative voice. HANGSAMAN is like shooting a cocktail of vodka and meth: it's weird, burns like hell, and you don't come down from those fever dreams the same person you were before the experienc......more

Goodreads review by luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) on November 15, 2023

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Dearest dearest darling most important dearest darling Natalie—this is me talking, your own priceless own Natalie.” Alice in Wonderland meets The Bell Jar in Shirley Jackson's much overlooked Hangsaman. The first time I read this exceedingly perplexing novel I felt con......more

Goodreads review by BJ on October 23, 2022

Sentence for sentence, Shirley Jackson is one of the great prose stylists in English literature. To my astonishment, Hangsaman is, if anything, a better novel than We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House—stranger, more complete in and of itself, if also more difficult and mo......more

Quotes

"[Hangsaman] confirms the belief that Miss Jackson is an exceptional writer."
—The London Times

"No one can question the author's great ability to do the kind of thing she wants to do. This is as disturbing a story as the shorter 'Lottery' was, and in exactly the same way."
—San Francisco Chronicle