We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

book data

1,722 ratings, 4.11 average rating, 341 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		38%
4		40%
3		16%
2		4%
1		0%

edit

published

October 31st 2006 (first published 1962) by Penguin Classics

binding

Paperback, 214 pages

isbn

0143039970 (isbn13: 9780143039976)

description

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 busi...more

[close] 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. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, 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.

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.

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." --Sarah Waters

[close]

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | compare prices ($7.00)…

new topic
discuss this book

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Next Best Boo...: The Title Game	5141	3872	12 hours, 50 min ago
100+ Book Challenge: Jenni's 100+ Books in 2009	15	61	12 days ago, 08:57AM
Readers and Reading: What are you reading now? Finished recently?	265	245	18 days ago, 12:25PM
The Book Challenge: Carly's Book Challenge	65	199	21 days ago, 01:19PM

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best Horror Novels

146 books | 245 voters

Best Books Ever

3914 books | 14237 voters

More lists...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,629)

sort: default (?) | date
filters: all | text-only

03/26/08

Paul rated it:

Read in April, 2008

Ah Merricat, silly Merricat, I do believe I love you. I'm drawn to interestingly insane women, and though of course you would poison me in the end, what a maddening and mysterious time I would first have. You are high on my list of literary loves. At least ones I dare speak of.

What I found so wonderful about this novel was the consistency of Merricat's insanity. Too often an author will distill the essence of insanity into the chaotic, and this is rarely a truism. Insanity is more o...more

Like this review? yes (14 people liked it)

5 comments

03/05/08

Becca rated it:

Read in May, 2008

Hands down--one of my all-time favorite books. No, it's not a horror or thriller in the contemporary sense, but just like her short story "The Lottery" this book exudes the "horror" of mass hysteria in its climactic scene. What does it take to make us stop being civilized, even for a moment, and do awful things to other human beings?

Yes, the residents of this house are different, especially the true murderer. But do they deserve what happens to them? And is their ...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

add a comment

08/05/07

sydney rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071075)

Read in August, 2007

This is my favorite book of all time, hands down, case closed.

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 an adult but reads 18, and frail old Uncle Julian. And Jonas the cat. Six years before the book opens, the rest of the Blackwells were murdered at the dinner table. Now Mary Katherine (aka Merrica...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

add a comment

05/29/07

dave eck rated it:

This book reminds me of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. Both books I hold dear but am not sure where We Have Always Lived in the Castle will rest.

Merricat and Constance Blackwood, the two main characters, live with their invalid uncle in the wake of their dead family. The novel follows Merricat and Constance through their daily rituals, revealing in spurts how their life alone came together. Rather than uncovering a truth, the revealati...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

09/26/07

Sierra rated it:

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: people who like their horror super-smart

So I just finished reading this for the second time, and I'm now sure it's one of my favorite books, ever. Shirley Jackson has been largely ignored as a major voice; she's most famous now for her book Raising Demons, about her experience as a mother, and for a couple short stories that have been widely anthologized but never positioned as part of a larger significant body of work. This book is totally, perfectly creepy and incredibly thought-provoking. The world she creates here is so seducti...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

08/10/07

Jason rated it:

bookshelves: mystery, thriller

Read in September, 2007

An incredibly haunting page-turner. The story of two sisters and their elderly uncle locked away on their sprawling estate from the surrounding villagers. The sisters are despised, mainly because they're rich but publicly because one of the sisters was accused of murdering the other four family members. The first-person narrative makes it difficult to keep the ending completely hidden but the story's not really about the mystery - it's about these two sisters attempting build a family out of the...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

01/02/09

Sam rated it:

bookshelves: novels

Read in December, 2008

Like chainsmokers and alcoholics, most reading addicts - the sort of people who are unable to leave the house, ride the bus, or take a bath without a book in their hand - started the habit early in life. Mention Maniac Magee around me, for instance, and watch me tear up. You could chalk this up to nostalgia, I guess, but I think there's something else going on here; the really great children's books (young adult books?), or the really great books that are about children strike at the heart of ...more Like chainsmokers and alcoholics, most reading addicts - the sort of people who are unable to leave the house, ride the bus, or take a bath without a book in their hand - started the habit early in life. Mention Maniac Magee around me, for instance, and watch me tear up. You could chalk this up to nostalgia, I guess, but I think there's something else going on here; the really great children's books (young adult books?), or the really great books that are about children strike at the heart of so many neuroses and life-long confusions that they affect readers in ways most adult novels don't. It's not that you can't identify with novelistic adult characters - I remember feeling like Jude Fawley from Jude the Obscure was some sort of long-lost sibling - but if you want to make someone feel truly basic emotions like loneliness, comfort, and fear, you're best going a little younger, where the pain is more painful and the comfort is more comforting.

Shirley Jackson isn't a children's writer, certainly, and she doesn't deal in comfort. But she does use the tropes of the children's novel in this book, her last novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which concerns the lives of two sisters who are shut up in old mansion after a tragedy took away half of their family. The younger sister runs wild through the countryside with her cat, while the older sister cooks elaborate meals for their demented uncle, who is plodding through his memoirs of the tragedy.

It sounds like a children's novel, right? But bear in mind that the younger sister is mildly demented, the older sister has a Stepford quality, the uncle is profane and morbid, and the house itself exerts an evil influence on the entire family. Children's literature is often about the development of the self; in the course of the story the characters grow! They mature! They figure out who they are! Except that in a Jackson story, characters grow inward, they regress, they split into many different pieces.

Anybody interested in a genuinely frightening investigation into the nature of morality and human identity in the guise of a children's story will love this book. (less)

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

04/11/09

Misha rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071075)

bookshelves: 2008, novel

I read this to evaluate it as a potential book club selection. One of our members absolutely refuses to read "horror," so we were trying to determine whether this fit the mold. It didn't. Instead, it's a slowly creeping (although brief) tale of madness, death and small town prejudice told through the eyes of an introverted teenage girl who lives in a kind of fantasy world isolated with her sister and invalid uncle after someone has poisoned the rest of the family. A flashy, money-motiv...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

10/29/08

Sherry (sethurner) rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, read-multiple-times, sci-fi-fantasy-horror

Read in April, 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 isolated in a New England town. The reader immediately sees that they are hated and feared, and eventually learns that the older sister was convicted of poisoning her parents and a brother. Arsenic in the s...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

08/17/08

Danny rated it:

bookshelves: library-book

This short novel, by the writer of the ubiquitous short story "The Lottery," is narrated by a little girl whose family are all dead except for an older sister, an invalid uncle, and at least some more distant relatives, one of which comes into the picture later in the story. The family was struck down by arsenic poisoning at dinner one night. It was in the sugar that people put on their blackberries. The narrator, Merricat, lives in a world of her own making on some land marked off ...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

07/10/07

Lani rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071075)

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: "flatlanders" living in Vermont

Whenever I read a Shirley Jackson book, I find myself looking for North Bennington familiarities in her settings. "The Lottery" and "The Haunting of Hill House" were both set in North B. (Bennington College's Jennings mansion is infamously the setting for "...Hill House.") And "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" also hints heavily at the same shared locale. ...If you are familiar with the layout of the town as it was in the early 1960s, you can realistica...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

01/29/09

Rachelterry rated it:

Read in February, 2009

There's nothing like an unreliable narrator to turn you into an investigator. Who can you trust? Who sprinkled arsenic on the berries at the dinner table? Merricat Blackwood is one of the most eccentric narrators I've come across. She buries things all over the property around her house, nails relics to trees, makes a sick game out of a walk into town, pictures people dead, and is unfailingly optimistic. This is a great novel.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

10/13/08

Christy rated it:

By the author of the story we all read in school "The Lottery," "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is Shirley Jackson's eerie tale of reclusive and agoraphobic sisters (one possibly autistic, one presumed a murderess) holing themselves up in their large family home six years after the murder of the other members of their once-large family (arsenic in the sugar bowl). One is torn between sympathy and horror at the plight of the Blackwood sisters. Oh, and all the villagers a...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comment

04/01/09

Bucket rated it:

bookshelves: reviewed

Read in September, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Merricat tells the story of her family. They are exiled by the town as it is assumed that Constance murdered most of the family. It's just M, C, and Uncle Julian living in their huge house. Constance never leaves and Merricat just to get groceries, and reluctantly, as she is hated and taunted mercilessly. M seems stunted (like she didn't finish growing up) and fiercely protective of C. Cousin Charles appears (to steal the family fortune) but C chooses to trust him while M tries all sorts of...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

03/23/09

Diane rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Six years earlier, four members of the Blackwood household died after being poisoned during their dinner. Now, three surviving members of the family share the house where the murders took place. All three are highly dysfunctional, and one of them is the killer.

Eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine is responsible for going into the village twice weekly in order to buy the supplies the family needs. She dreads the chore, and avoids the gawking villagers as much as possible, wishing them de...more Six years earlier, four members of the Blackwood household died after being poisoned during their dinner. Now, three surviving members of the family share the house where the murders took place. All three are highly dysfunctional, and one of them is the killer.

Eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine is responsible for going into the village twice weekly in order to buy the supplies the family needs. She dreads the chore, and avoids the gawking villagers as much as possible, wishing them dead. She has a superstitious imagination, and at home she has set up a defense system of magical barricades to keep the world out and the family safe: buried treasures, items nailed to trees, magical words never to be spoken, etc.

Her sister, twenty-eight-year-old Constance, is the gardener and cook, and knowledgable about all types of poison. She has already been tried and acquitted of the murders of her family, but the people of the village believe her to be guilty. She is terrified of people and is unable to go beyond the garden.

Uncle Julian was also poisoned along with the other victims, but because he injested only a small amount of the poison, he survived. Now he is bound to a wheelchair and dependent on Constance to care for him. His mind dwells constantly on the events of that fateful day. He speaks about it daily, pores over newspaper clippings, and claims he is writing a book about the crime.

Together, these three characters have managed to establish a dysfunctional though peaceful existence, but it is only a delicate peace. When a greedy and domineering cousin shows up, and tries to take on the role of family patriarch, the peace is broken. The state of this family, horrible from the beginning, worsens with the introduction of this outsider, and events move to a truly awful conclusion.

I would categorize this book as psychological horror. Tension is present from the beginning, and strengthens steadily as the story progresses. The killer's identity is revealed late in the book, but by that point it's hardly a surprise. The full horror of this family's condition dawns gradually on the reader. The book is really a character study of a sociopathic personality: not so much frightening as creepy and disturbing.(less)

Like this review? yes

add a comment

01/10/09

Bookczuk rated it:

What a story! It's become a classic in literature, made into a play and even a movie I believe, is in the works. It's a somewhat disturbing psychological tale, narrated by eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, (who really seems to have the mind of an eleven year old- which is the age she was when a large portion of her family died from arsenic poisoning.) So many different psychological states are depicted by the various characters in the novel, that it should be u...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/28/08

Laurie Novoryta rated it:

Read in December, 2008

I've never heard of Shirley Jackson, who wrote this book some 30 years ago, and this was her last completed novel. The cover popped out at me while waiting in line to purchase several other books. There is absolutely nothing on the back cover or inside flaps to describe this book, but after a quick read of the first page and a check on google for reviews, I was intrigued. Go figure that I completed this book first over the others - it was mysterious from start to finish.

It's a quick ...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/22/08

Alison rated it:

Read in December, 2008

This is the first book I’ve read in a year, for various school-related reasons, and I’m still not sure what to think of it or whether this was the right book to take me back to the world of reading. It has a wonderfully morbid tone that carries throughout the book. It starts slowly and with a sense of unease, leaving you to wonder why this family is so plagued with this strange otherworldliness. There is one day that all family members seem to have not been able to move on from, and once ...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

02/18/09

Christine rated it:

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead."
...more

Like this review? yes

1 comment

11/02/08

Kagan rated it:

Two young women cursed with man-hands and murderous tendencies embark on a house remodel in this non-stop "crypto-feminist" romp.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comment

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 131 132 next »

recent status updates | recommend it | blog it

combine
other editions (15)

More editions...

quotes from this book

"We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved." More quotes...