We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Shirley Jackson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)  
published October 31st 2006 by Penguin Classics
first published 1962
binding Paperback
isbn 0143039970   (isbn13: 9780143039976)
pages 160
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
date added
02-10-07



Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.







discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

groups with this book

Book Club!




friend reviews (0)

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






other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1377)



Samantha
Samantha rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
01/28/08

Read in July, 2007
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Susan Evans
Susan rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
08/24/08

bookshelves: classic, fiction, horror, paranormal, read-in-2008, sisters
Read in August, 2008
"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 my family is dead."

I was...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Kristen
Kristen rated it: 3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars
04/25/08

bookshelves: horror
Here is a book that is hard to review. I know that most of the other reviews are glowing, as Ms. Jackson has a fervent fan base and a brilliant writing style. However this story was not really to my taste. First of all, I did not find this to be a horror story, more of a darker drama, perhaps something you would see on the Lifetime network. The tale is of Constance and Merricat Blackwood two girls of 28 and 18 respectively. Merricat is the voice of the book and all is told from her perspective. ...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Paul
Paul rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
05/02/08

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 often an ...more
Like this review?   yes   (4 people liked it)
  1 comments

Lani
07/13/07

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

dave
dave rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
05/29/07

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 revealation only ...more
Like this review?   yes   (2 people liked it)
  add a comment

sydney
08/08/07

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 Merricat), Cons...more
Like this review?   yes   (3 people liked it)
  add a comment

Becca
Becca rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
05/01/08

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 visitor ...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Dianeb
Dianeb rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
08/27/08

bookshelves: horror
Read in August, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Elizabeth
Elizabeth rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
01/15/08

I’ve been intrigued by Shirley Jackson’s work for a long time, since I read her quietly gruesome short story “The Lottery” as a high school student. I read her novel The Haunting of Hill House a while ago, but haven’t read anything else by her until now. She’s often described as “gothic” and “macabre,” and to a certain degree these labels are appropriate - although I think she’s also interested in how the seemingly ordinary surface of small-town American life conceal...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Danny
Danny rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
08/17/08

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

Sierra
Sierra rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
09/26/07

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 ...more
Like this review?   yes   (1 person liked it)
  add a comment

Dfordoom
Dfordoom rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
04/03/08

Read in February, 2004
“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance…I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.” So begins the story of Merricat and her sister, who are alone in the world, apart from their uncle Julian, since four members of the family were fatally poisoned. Merricat has surrounded the house with mag...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Faith
Faith rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
01/10/08

An excellent and spooky novelette in classic Southern gothic style with good pacing and spot-on characters. You are nearly guaranteed to appreciate this if you enjoyed her short story The Lottery (because didn't we all have to read it in high school English class?). Throughout the entire book, however, I imagined the Olsen twins playing these sisters, and it was slightly distracting. If you do chance to read this, DO NOT picture the Olsen twins in the hypothetical movie version. Don't even pict...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Katherine
Katherine rated it: 3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars
02/02/08

Wonderfully creepy little novella. The townspeople have always hated the Blackwood family... and with good reason, perhaps. Would you attend an afternoon high tea at the scene of a mass poisoning, with Constance Blackwood, suspected poisoner, as your charming hostess?

Our unhinged narrator, Merricat, is so dignified in her eccentricity, so vulnerable in her hostility, that you can't help but like her. (I once knew a guy who wanted to marry her.)

However, I can't figure out what's the large...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Nicole
Nicole rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
01/21/08

who knew? i had no idea who the shirley jackson behind "the lottery" was or that she had written other, amazing work. this short novel is creepy, beautiful and totally weird. it's the kind of book where you truly wonder about the writer who conceived such a believable, lovable yet intensely strange narrator. the use of repetition is wonderful and the careful descriptions do a lot of work; they're not decorative at all. if you read this, and you should, i recommend this edition because ...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Sarah
Sarah rated it: 2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars
11/19/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 2007
what a disappointment. i had never heard of this book before i read it. i saw it in a bookstore when i was in seattle. i was intrigued by the cover and it was recommended by a worker of the store. also, it is so highly rated on the goodreads site.
i kept hoping this book was gonna get better, but the reality is that it was just eh. this is a story of 3 freaks living in a house and live the most boring lives imaginable. mericat is 18, yet acts like she's 7 and thinks that they all live on the m...more
Like this review?   yes  
  2 comments

Ellen
Ellen rated it: 3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars
11/28/07

Love Shirley Jackson. That said, although this was a very absorbing, fast read, I preferred The Haunting of Hill House.

The viewpoint character's voice made it impossible for Jackson's use of language -- in my opinion -- to reach the heights that it did in Haunting of Hill House.

She still made amazing (if depressing) observations about human nature, and blew me away with her ability to observe in general, and portray those observations in such a way that I feel I'm taking something wi...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment

Jason
Jason rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
09/09/07

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   (1 person liked it)
  add a comment

Megan
Megan rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
01/11/08

bookshelves: favorites, gothic, horror
Read in October, 2007
This was maybe the best book I read in 2007. More than the story, the language of this book gave it a creepy atmosphere I couldn't shake off right away after I was finished reading. Merricat (isn't that the coolest name?) is a strong and original female character, and her relationship with her sister Constance is fascinating.

I think psychiatrists and psychologists would enjoy reading this and trying to diagnose the characters' individual mental illnesses. I have my own secret theories about...more
Like this review?   yes  
  add a comment


« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 68 69





book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 4.16 (953 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 4.16 (859 ratings)
number of reviews: 189






other editions

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Paperback)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Paperback)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Paperback)









quote

"We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame." more quotes »