62 pages • 2-hour read
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
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Themes
Symbols & Motifs
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse, graphic violence, and death.
Nests
The nest is the novel’s central symbol, representing the elusive ideals of safety, belonging, and family. It contrasts the nourishing self-sacrifice of a loving home with the inherited toxicity of an abusive one, directly exploring the theme of Building Family Through Care Instead of Inheritance. The novel opens with Shesheshen’s memory of her first nest: the body of her father, whose remains provided both sustenance and shelter. This act, though gruesome by human standards, establishes a baseline for perfect parental love. The narrative states: “If Shesheshen could have spent her entire life inside the nest of his remains, she would have” (3). This nostalgic longing for a place of absolute security, created through a loving sacrifice, shapes her entire existence. Her quest is not for power or conquest but for a partner with whom she can recreate that sense of home.
This symbol culminates in Shesheshen’s relationship with Homily, whose body she initially views as a potential nest for her eggs. However, as their bond deepens, the meaning of the nest evolves from a site of biological reproduction to one of mutual emotional construction. The novel’s title— Someone You Can Build a Nest In—signifies this shift from a parasitic to a collaborative act. By choosing to build a nest with Homily rather than in her, Shesheshen rejects a predatory cycle and embraces the creation of a found family. Their shared lair becomes the physical manifestation of this new nest: It is a sanctuary built not on blood ties or societal norms but on shared trust, healing, and the radical acceptance of each other’s true nature.
Bones
Bones symbolize the constructed and often painful nature of identity, particularly for those who are forced to mask their true selves to survive. For Shesheshen, bones are not an innate part of her being but are scavenged tools she uses to build a passable human form, thereby physically manifesting the theme of The Psychological Costs of Masking and Identity Performance. Without a skeleton, she is an amorphous, vulnerable creature; with bones, she can walk, interact, and hide in the human world. The process of constructing a skeleton is described as a painful necessity—as her “innards [squeeze] those rods and stones, aligning them into a loose skeletal structure,” they tear her tissues apart just to hold a shape (6). This visceral imagery highlights the immense physical and emotional cost on Shesheshen when she performs a socially accepted, human identity, and the novel uses this experience as a metaphor for masking neurodivergence and queerness.
The bones are the foundation of Shesheshen’s disguise that includes wigs and clothing, such as the “red riding hood” she dons to appear as the harmless girl Roislin (8). This layering demonstrates that identity is a performance built from scavenged parts, both literal and cultural. The symbol gains further complexity when contrasted with the Baroness, another monster who wears a human “mask” to accumulate power and inflict violence. While Shesheshen assembles bones to find safety and connection, the Baroness maintains her human form to prey upon others. By presenting these two different uses of a constructed identity, the novel suggests that the morality of disguise depends on its purpose, and it critiques a society that forces outsiders into painful performances while allowing its most powerful members to use their own masks for monstrous ends.
Consumption
The recurring motif of consumption explores the ambiguous boundaries between survival, violence, intimacy, and identity. The act of eating is multifaceted, and it represents both the brutal necessity of a predator and the profound tenderness of a caregiver. This duality forces a reevaluation of monstrosity, as the novel questions whether true savagery lies in the monster who eats to live or the society that metaphorically devours its own. For Shesheshen, consumption is a pragmatic tool for survival and self-creation. She eats her siblings to live, devours Catharsis Wulfyre to gather strength and bones, and keeps an open bear trap inside her as a “secret pair of jaws, for when people needed to be bitten” (6). This form of consumption is a straightforward, biological act that directly contrasts with the Wulfyre family’s psychological consumption of one another through abuse and manipulation.
The meaning of the motif transforms when Shesheshen encounters Homily. The threat of Shesheshen consuming Homily is inverted when Homily feeds Shesheshen broth from a rabbit she hunted herself. This act of being fed is Shesheshen’s first experience of selfless care from a stranger, redefining consumption as an act of life-giving intimacy. The warm broth nourishes and heals her, physically and emotionally, laying the foundation for the found family that she and Homily will go on to build together. This pivotal scene demonstrates that incorporating another being into oneself—whether by eating them, feeding them, or building a life with them—is not inherently monstrous. Instead, the novel uses the motif of consumption to distinguish the violence of predation from the radical intimacy of mutual care.
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