false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175718844m/550199.jpg 89724 18 Visitors call seldom at Blackwood House. Taking tea at the scene of a multiple poisoning, with a suspected murderess as one's host, is a perilous business. For a start, the talk tends to turn to arsenic. "It happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night," explains Uncle Julian, continually rehearsing the details of the fatal family meal. "My sister made these this morning," says Merricat, politely proffering a plate of rum cakes, fresh from the poisoner's kitchen. <I>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</I>, Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. "What place would be better for us than this?" she asks, of the neat, secluded realm she shares with her uncle and with her beloved older sister, Constance. "Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people." Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, ritually revisiting them. She has made "a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us" against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers.<p> Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters' careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat's treasures, talking privately to Constance about "normal lives" and "boy friends." Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible secret, the convergence of the villagers upon the house, and a spectacular unleashing of collective spite.<p> The sisters are propelled further into seclusion and solipsism, abandoning "time and the orderly pattern of our old days" in favor of an ever-narrowing circuit of ritual and shadow. They have themselves become talismans, to be alternately demonized and propitiated, darkly, with gifts. Jackson's novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more--like some of her other fictions--as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normality itself. "Poor strangers," says Merricat contentedly at last, studying trespassers from the darkness behind the barricaded Blackwood windows. "They have so much to be afraid of." <I>--Sarah Waters</I> 847007 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle total:2181|5:834|4:873|3:370|2:92|1:12| 2181 8968 3430 429 5 18 false true Tue Apr 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 09:12:27 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 12:40:59 -0700 2008
What I fo...more...]]> 5 8 false false Thu May 01 09:44:55 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 05 12:11:18 -0800 2008 Thu May 01 09:44:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 5 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 05 16:00:11 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 08 10:17:47 -0700 2007
Shirley Jackson wrote the short story "The Lottery," which is about a creepy small town. This follows in that tradition. It's about the Blackwells-- Mary Katherine, who is 18 but reads 12 to me, Constance, who is...more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue May 29 13:34:57 -0700 2007 Tue May 29 14:02:37 -0700 2007
Merricat and Constance Blackwood, the two main characters, live with their invalid uncle in th...more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 26 18:53:19 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 26 19:06:17 -0700 2007 Raising Demons, about her experience as a mother, and for a couple short stories that have been wi...more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 10 09:14:47 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 09 08:08:34 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 08:17:01 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 08:30:32 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Apr 11 16:54:25 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 11 16:59:53 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Apr 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 29 09:46:31 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 13 20:09:22 -0700 2009 We Have Always Lived in the Castle has elements of horror - fear and loathing in an ordinary small town, a whiff of the supernatural, a big spooky old house, but it's more subtle than most. There are no ghosts, no bug-eyed monsters. The plot involves two sisters and an elderly uncle who live isolate...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Aug 17 11:15:00 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 17 11:15:10 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 10 09:25:56 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 13 11:40:07 -0700 2007 The Haunting of Hill House" were both set in North B. (Bennington College's Jennings mansion is infamously the setting for "...Hill House."...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Feb 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 29 16:42:29 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 17:22:44 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Oct 13 08:49:35 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 14 10:12:27 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 23 10:17:59 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 10:18:29 -0700 2009
Eighteen-year-old Mary Kat...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Jan 10 14:53:41 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 14:53:45 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Oct 10 18:16:25 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 18:24:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 08 19:16:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 19:41:47 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Dec 31 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 28 16:54:42 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 31 13:26:59 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Nov 10 16:50:21 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 16:55:04 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Nov 21 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 04 02:53:25 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 22 01:24:14 -0800 2009
It is a tale of two sisters, both psycologically damaged in different ways, and how their life becomes changed despite their intention that everything should always rem...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=550199