theguywhoreads

Hangsaman to me is probably one of the weirdest book I have ever read. Shirley Jackson's second novel released in 1951 centers the story of one Natalie Waite, a young teenager about to enroll into college and how along the way, the way she sees the world isn't the same as how others sees it. As life in college begins to take a different turn, she walks among the living in a dream like state of awareness not knowing what is real and what isn't. Thinking she is a fiction of a life she is living, her journey crumbles not knowing what hold's her sanity and the reality we all live in.

Based on the inspiration of an unsolved disappearance of Paula Jean Welden, an american college student that disappeared in 1946, Shirley Jackson wrote a world that truly is the weird and the strangest tale of between real and fiction. It is almost towards the sense that feels like madness but then again, as a reader it does makes me wonder what does it all mean. Although the reading is quite addictive that really takes me into the mind of Natalie Waite, there is some thing not normal about her, which in a way intriguing as I read. Was it a journey of a girl that so happens at the beginning, some thing happen that changes her to such confusion of identity or was it some thing more of an experience in her college life that lead spiraling down into a dark place where only Natalie sees it? One needs to read to know.

It is a hard book to rate but I felt a 3 out of 5 star is a much more appropriate rating for me as there is so much to explore here and yet, what was the motivation of it. Was it the strangeness or the understanding of a mind that can't grasp reality? For me, its some where I know that deserves a 3 for even though it is an intriguing read, I am still trying to figure out what the title means and wanting to understand this strange book I just finished today.