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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Shirley Jackson

3.98 · Rating details · 127,286 ratings · 14,828 reviews

Alone since four members of the family died of arsenic poisoning, Merricat, Constance and Julian Blackwood spend their days in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears.

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Hardcover, 214 pages

Published September 21st 1962 by Viking Books

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Nov 02, 2013 Nataliya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-reads

Bizarre, strange, haunting, sinister, disturbing, twisted, foreboding, suffocatingly claustrophobic, leaving you with the ever-growing sense of unease. What else can I say about this book to give it justice?

This is a chillingly terrifying story that has nothing to do with the things that go BUMP in the night. No, it's the odd terror that comes when things go BUMP in the mind. And the most terrifying things are those that are left unsaid, that creep up at you from behind the printed lines, just h Bizarre, strange, haunting, sinister, disturbing, twisted, foreboding, suffocatingly claustrophobic, leaving you with the ever-growing sense of unease. What else can I say about this book to give it justice?

This is a chillingly terrifying story that has nothing to do with the things that go BUMP in the night. No, it's the odd terror that comes when things go BUMP in the mind. And the most terrifying things are those that are left unsaid, that creep up at you from behind the printed lines, just hinted at and left for your own brain to chillingly realize.

“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.”

Behind the events of the story is the mystery of the Blackwood family, rich New England landowners who are quite well-aware of their presumed class-snobbish superiority over the inhabitants of the nearby village; the family which is in turn met with distrust, fear and even hatred - not quite unfounded, actually. You see, six years ago half of the members of the Blackwood family were poisoned by arsenic in their food. Three are left: Uncle Julian, left crippled by the poison, hanging on to the remnants of his mind, obsessed with the tragedy of the day of the murder; Constance, an agoraphobiac trapped in the narrow confines of her domestic universe, cooking for the remnants of her family with a strained chirpy attitude - a young woman who was also the cook on the day of the fateful arsenic poisoning and therefore is considered the poisoner in the eyes of the villagers; and Mary Katherine, Merricat, the narrator of the story, now eighteen, who was sent to her room without dinner on the day of the poisoning, who now serves as a link between her diminished and scorned family and the rest of the world.

For a careful reader, the identity of the poisoner is really very easy to figure out after the first few pages. The psychological impact is never about the identity, it's about the implications of it. And that's what gives it a real punch.

“I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die.”

This strange little family survives without ever deviating from their strict routines, remaining shut off from the outside world until one day an unexpected arrival threatens the fragile stability - of the family and of Merricat's mind. And the events that follow lead to the scariest and saddest ending presented in the most chillingly subtle way possible.

“I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying. I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs.Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true."

Our narrator, Merricat Blackwood, is not a character you can easily forget. She is written with such skill, with such vividness, with such persuasion that the pages come alive with her bizarre voice of a seemingly adult woman forever trapped in neverending childhood, in the world of twisted magical reality of strange rituals and special objects and strict routine that can never be changed, or else.

"On Sunday morning the change was one day nearer. I was resolute about not thinking my three magic words and would not let them into my mind, but the air of change was so strong that there was no avoiding it; change lay over the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog. I would not forget my magic words; they were MELODY GLOUCESTER PEGASUS, but I refused to let them into my mind."

And the scariest thing of all to me was how more and more enthralling Merricat's voice became with every page, with every minute spent inside her head, until it's hard not to take her side despite all the implications that it carries, despite reason suggesting otherwise, despite knowledge of what's going on. And that's when you realize the magnetic pull Merricat has, holding her little world together in the ways that suit her - little world it may be, but it's wholly her own, steadily holding against anything that can be perceived as a disturbance, an interference, a threat. And the words of her little game in the summerhouse take on a new resonance.

“Bow your heads to our beloved Mary Katherine…or you will be dead.”

I found this book deeply disturbing in its deceiving simplicity, and scarily engrossing - the book written by an oddball ostracized agoraphobiac obsessed with food and trapped in her own little universe by the last years of her life. Shirley Jackson's Constance and Merricat, securely huddled in their own little corner of the world, not accepted but feared and left alone, the heart of legends and superstitions - was it in a way a cry for help or an unattainable dream? I don't know, and I think I sleep better precisely because I don't know.

Unflinching 5 stars and a shudder at the seemingly so innocent of an ending:
“Oh Constance, we are so happy.”
...more

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Jul 09, 2016 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, gothic

This book is a masterpiece. It is short and spare and written in crystal clear prose, yet so evocative that it is richer in nuance than most good novels twice its size. It is so good I could kick myself for not reading it years ago, yet so mythic I am convinced I have known it always, like a tragic folktale or a chilling childhood dream. And yet, for all its grimness, it is essentially a comedy: darkly, transcendently, funny.

The Blackwood sisters—28-year-old Constance and 18-year-old Mary Kathar
This book is a masterpiece. It is short and spare and written in crystal clear prose, yet so evocative that it is richer in nuance than most good novels twice its size. It is so good I could kick myself for not reading it years ago, yet so mythic I am convinced I have known it always, like a tragic folktale or a chilling childhood dream. And yet, for all its grimness, it is essentially a comedy: darkly, transcendently, funny.

The Blackwood sisters—28-year-old Constance and 18-year-old Mary Katharine—live in a big old house on the outskirts of town. They are fitfully persecuted by the locals, who are convinced one of them is a murderer: their whole family—with the exception of scatterbrained Uncle Julian—was poisoned with arsenic six years ago. Now the three survivors—along with their black cat Jonas—are living together in deliberate tranquility, when long-lost cousin Charles arrives on their doorstep, barely concealing his interest in the lovely Constance and the Blackwood family estate.

The narrative voice of Merrycat—nickname for Mary Katherine—is perhaps the most distinctive thing about the novel. Deceptively childlike, obsessed with omens, magic words, and lucky days, Merrycat is nevertheless a clear and sharp-eyed observer of the day-to-day events of her world. Her naive shrewdness speaks to us like Huckleberry Finn’s, her quirkiness charms us like Holden Caulfield’s, yet she possesses a distance, a reserve, that is all her own.

Those of you who read novels like autobiographies will find tantalizing tidbits here. The local village resembles Jackson’s North Bennington, Vermont, a place Jackson always felt treated her family as outsiders (college eggheads, Democrats, atheists, Jews) and provided her the inspiration for her notorious early success, “The Lottery." The two sisters were inspired by Jackson’s two daughters, the placid and cautious Constance by Joanne and the superstitious and daring Merrycat by Sarah. But of course Jackson drew on herself for inspiration too, particularly from her fascination with witchcraft and sympathetic magic and her persistent, crippling agoraphobia. And Cousin Charles resembles her husband, in his critical comments about the housekeeping and his continual concerns about money. (Although husband Stanley was a literary critic, his wife Shirley was the literary cash cow of the family, and he once calculated precisely how much money was lost whenever his wife wasted her valuable time composing a letter to a friend.)

Perhaps what I like best about the book—besides the dark humor, and the voice of Merrycat of course—is its sweet and sad conclusion. After the destruction has passed and gone—a climax which reveals the full impact of the novel’s title—we witness a family rebuild an old life out of love, and even glimpse a little human compassion for a change. It is the twilight happiness of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, the kind of happiness Lear and Cordelia might have enjoyed, if they had lived.

Here is the novel’s famous first paragraph, which gives you a good idea of Merrycat’s distinctive voice:

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 cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

...more

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Nov 07, 2017 Miranda Reads rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

Halloween is just around the corner and it's time for some spooky books - but which ones are worth your time? Check out this BookTube Video for answers!

What you think you know, you don't

Several years ago, someone poisoned the sugar bowl at the last Blackwood family dinner, resulting in the death of nearly every family member.

Only the two sisters (Merricat and Constance) and their ailing uncle (Julian) remain on the secluded estate but they are not the same as they once were.

Since that fatef ...more

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Oct 04, 2017 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror-etc, own

You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine. Is it still in use? You are wondering; has it been cleaned? You may very well ask; was it thoroughly washed?

This book is looney tune. I'm not even sure about some things that happened.

One of my GR friends needs to message me so we can discuss some things on this book. (Of course no one will read this so it's a mute point)

So Constance, Merricat, and Uncle Julian live in the home together with all of their land enclosed. The rest of the ...more

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Mar 16, 2017 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gothic, unreliable-narrator

My favorite Shirley Jackson novel. A masterpiece of unreliable narration and of the eerie relationship between childishness and horror.

I'm now re-reading this for a December group read, so I thought I'd update this review as I go.

A lot has already been written about the masterful opening paragraph of this book, so I'll focus instead on the opening chapter. It basically involves the narrator, Merricat, walking into town to do some shopping. Sounds boring? It's anything but that. Shirley Jackson u ...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Tatiana rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, why-the-hype, mysteries-thrillers-horror

I might be the only person in the world who thinks this book is too weird, senseless, anticlimactic and almost plotless. The characters however are charismatic in their craziness. It's just not my type of crazy. ...more

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Oct 30, 2020 Muhtasin Oyshik rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 001-300-pp, 4-star, fiction, classics, read-in-2020, novella

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
description

Manipulation, cruelty, and tragic. As this book was Jackson's final work and my first experience with her writing, I enjoyed it. An unconventional horror novel but the story can able to examine people on their relationships, sympathy, separation, greed, and evil. Excellent writing. peculiar story but interesting. Overall I enjoyed it.

I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang i
...more

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Dec 28, 2015 s.penkevich rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Her, that guy over there, him, and you.

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Diane Rehm Show

Shelves: psychological_terror

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

A cliche in American horror films is to include children singing a song that is seemingly innocent at first, but gnaws at the nerves with a haunting sadism. We watch children, young and naive, signing and spinning in a corn field bathed by an autumn dusk; the cliche works because it is an image that we welcome through o ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: shirley-you-jest, favorite-books, a-buck-and-change, sister-act, vermont

I hate you, Shirley Jackson.

I HATE YOU!!

I mean, I know you're dead and all, but still. . .

I want to drive to your haunted house in Vermont and throw rocks at your windows.

I want to smash every pumpkin, carved, by your front door.

I want to hold a séance in your bedroom to summon your spirit, then I want to pull those ugly ass bobby pins from your hair, rip those ugly ass dated glasses off your nose and pull that ugly ass cable knit sweater over your face.

And then. . . I think I want to make out ...more

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Apr 13, 2015 Fabian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A.K.A.: Grey Gardens by William Faulkner. Are these unfortunate souls dead or alive in their domestic limbo? Oh, this is one delicious yarn with plenty of turns--with a terror that comes to us only by the Literary Mistress of the Dark Herself, Shirley Jackson. The luxurious morbidity, the Harper Lee Goth cynicism of the book, it is all an absolute delight. I am truly beginning to think that all of her books are like this one--simply the classiest horror of ALL TIME.

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Mar 16, 2016 Felice Laverne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: southern-gothic, full-review, oh-where-have-you-been-all-my-life, gothic

“The least Charles could have done,” Constance said, considering seriously, “was shoot himself through the head in the driveway.”

Have you ever tiptoed down a hall in a dark house late at night, not sure if you really heard that bump in the night? That is what reading this novel was like, in all of the best ways possible. Shirley Jackson is a renowned master at the macabre, the unnerving, the Gothic genre, and this work puts her talents on full display—in HD. Most have read "The Lottery," wheth ...more

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Oct 01, 2015 Edward Lorn rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Pretty language and creepy atmosphere mix with a plot I was expecting a little more from. I kept thinking, any minute now... any minute now this is going to blow a part in my hair... any minute now I'm going to think "Where has this book been all my life?" ... any minute now I'm going to see what everyone else sees in this book and cream my acid-washed Jordaches.

And then it ended. Yup...

The unreliable narrator worked well, and the agoraphobic feel of the piece was certainly established... but I ...more

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Jan 19, 2015 Madeline rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson's group of misguided investigators discuss the idea that some houses are inherently born evil, and are destined to be haunted from the moment they're built. We Have Always Lived in the Castle explores the opposite idea: how a home becomes a haunted house.

One of the many, many fascinating things about this book is the way it could have been approached in a completely different way. It could have opened with someone - a stranger to the village, most l ...more

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Aug 28, 2018 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american

High Gothic Art

Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, and even James: Jackson is in their company when it comes to the Gothic genre. She writes in noir et blanc; every word is necessary; the context is revealed at just the right continuous pace; and there is plenty to reveal. No gimmicks, no spiritualist allusions, no unlikely situations: Jackson puts later writers like Stephen King to shame with her talent and wit.

Someone is a homicidal maniac, but which of the Blackwood sisters is it? The traumatized and High Gothic Art

Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, and even James: Jackson is in their company when it comes to the Gothic genre. She writes in noir et blanc; every word is necessary; the context is revealed at just the right continuous pace; and there is plenty to reveal. No gimmicks, no spiritualist allusions, no unlikely situations: Jackson puts later writers like Stephen King to shame with her talent and wit.

Someone is a homicidal maniac, but which of the Blackwood sisters is it? The traumatized and agoraphobic Constance, or the obsessive-compulsive and more than slightly mad Mary Katherine? Or perhaps it’s the wheelchair-ridden Uncle Julian who fades in and out of dementia? The victims had their own problems, genetic as well as domestic; who knows but they did each other in. An accident is a possibility - perhaps the ancestors left some lethal material around. Then again, the ‘villagers’ are not a very stable bunch; nor for that matter are the ladies of the local gentry who have more than a morbid curiosity in the family Blackwood. When the sinister cousin Charles come to visit, the question becomes more than academic.

The village itself is part of the mystery. How did it arise as what keeps it going economically? What is the cause of the animosity among the ‘leading families’? Why is the finest house in the village, which should be owned by the Blackwood’s, now a junkyard? There is no uncertainty that the village has some distinctive mores: “In this village the men stayed young and did the gossiping and the women aged with grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting for the men to get up and come home.” Jackson piles on the complexity at the same rate that she reveals the situation. For every question answered, two more are posed. The first person narrator might be either insane or acutely insightful. It’s a technique guaranteed to keep the reader’s interest.

It’s also a technique which creates a narrative world amazingly efficiently. The questions of the reader are the things the characters themselves are concerned about. The stance of each, his or her position in the puzzle, is who they are. Little further description is necessary. Strangely, how they fit with other is enough for the reader to imagine what they look like, how they dress, what the landscape is like. For example, Jackson characterises the entire village without specifying anything: “All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it.” She adds nothing but a terse negative formula: “whatever planned to be colorful lost its heart quickly in the village.” Nothing more is needed. She provokes participation by the reader who fills in the descriptive gaps like the eye automatically interprets perspective.

This is more than genre horror or fantasy. Jackson writes literary fiction. This is her masterpiece. ...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Oct 09, 2009 Paul Bryant rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Just another homicidal paranoid-schizophrenic proto-hippy 18 year old girl-child who lives with her older agoraphobic/social-phobic sister and dementia-sufferer wheelchair-bound uncle in an isolated house in the aftermath of a dreadful family tragedy whereby all of the family except these three were poisoned to death in that very house. It’s not an uncommon situation. I know three similar cases here in Nottingham, and I could have told Cousin Charles Blackwood, who turns up crudely attempting to ...more

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Sep 05, 2017 Luffy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: page-turner, 5-star, superb-characterization, pretty-good, young-adult, classic, popular

This is one to cherish. I thought that I've seen everything there is to read. We Have Always Lived in the Castle almost...almost! surprised me. Here is the ultimate dysfunctional family. The Simpsons eat your heart out. Merricat has mostly her elder sister Constance to live with.

Death by arsenic is a painful way to die. I've been fascinated by arsenic ever since I read The Mysterious Affair at Styles. It used to be available at the chemist and apparently you had to sign your name to get it. Anyw ...more

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Oct 06, 2019 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2019-100-reviews, 2019-read, reviewed

I'm an outlier here, I didn't think much of the book at all. The plot was unbelievably hackneyed just like Shirley Jackson's other really-highly rated book, The Lottery. The author writes well - good atmospheric scenes and well-drawn characters but the plots are just so unoriginal and the characters with variations are nothing new either: we've all read them in many novels before.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, fiction, united-states, mystery, classics, 20th-century, gothic

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson.

Merricat Blackwood, her elder sister Constance, and their ailing Uncle Julian live in a large house on extensive grounds, in isolation from the nearby village. Constance has not left their home in six years, going no farther than her large garden.

Uncle Julian, confined to a wheelchair, obsessively writes and re-writes notes for his memoirs, while Cons ...more

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Dec 24, 2015 Justin Tate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was my first exposure to Shirley Jackson and, perhaps consequently, holds an abnormally large portion of my heart. The Haunting of Hill House is probably better, and "The Lottery" is perhaps the best 20 pages of prose ever written, but I find myself daydreaming of We Have Always Lived in the Castle the most.

I'm not going to describe plot because I went into it knowing nothing and liked it that way. If you absolutely need to know, read the description--but also know that it won't do it ...more

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Dec 16, 2019 emma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, couldn-t-wait-to-read, reviewed, owned, beautifully-written, recommend, 4-and-a-half-stars, non-ya, dark

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

I don’t really have a good reason to begin with that quote, other than the fact that I’m obsessed with it. It’s up there with the Boggis, Bunce, & Bean poem from Fantastic Mr. Fox in the global rankings of Creepy Rhymes Chanted By Neighborhood Children In Reference To Nearby Monster-People.

The difference between this boo ...more

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Sep 24, 2019 Sid rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Loved it !

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Mar 01, 2017 Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, madness-psychi-supernat-faith-proj, eng-240-spr-17, ya-fall-2018, best-books-ever, books-loved-2017, ya-fall-2017, mystery-detective-thriller

Happy Halloween, (which for horror fans in general or Shirley Jackson fans in particular is basically every day of the year), in conjunction with my having just read The Shirley Jackson Project, a comics tribute collection edited by Robert Kirby.

9/17/18: Third read for my Fall 2018 YA course, and what has emerged as one of my favorite books of all time. This time I noticed all the food references more than ever. And loved the strange lyricism of Merricat's deft observations. Are Merricat and Co ...more

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Oct 25, 2017 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, 2017-shelf

Such a classic.

Even when we know what's going on and why it's happening, it's so easy to fall into the character and root for her. I can't stand the things that people put her through, from the town, to Charles, or even to her own parents. (Although to be sure, we only get a tiny little glance at her parents from a few repeated lines.)

When reading this I was thinking of Paul Tremblay's Head Full of Ghosts for the murder (some say accident) of most of the family at dinner, but of course, this wa Such a classic.

Even when we know what's going on and why it's happening, it's so easy to fall into the character and root for her. I can't stand the things that people put her through, from the town, to Charles, or even to her own parents. (Although to be sure, we only get a tiny little glance at her parents from a few repeated lines.)

When reading this I was thinking of Paul Tremblay's Head Full of Ghosts for the murder (some say accident) of most of the family at dinner, but of course, this was the spiritual mother of that tale. All the little hints and reveals weren't precisely news, of course, but the real treat was in the psychological nuance.

Like The Haunting of Hill House, it's not the outright horror scenes that make the book shine, but the way the characters are unstable, what it means, and how it drives the details and the horror of the final scenes. For anyone in love with psychology, Shirley Jackson is a treasure trove of discussable characters. Hell, Shirley Jackson herself suffered from quite a few of them, herself, and brought the feels to the page in a way that few others could dream.

The townsfolk were walking nightmares, all color drained out of them. Paranoid delusions or not, I was always rooting on Merricat. Did I get very disturbed by her imaginings? Not really. People can be real *hits. Was I disturbed by her reciting of poisons or the magical incantations she made up in order to protect her house? Not at all. Again, I like weird people and she was, despite what we figure out on a careful first read, mostly just dancing to her own drum. She grew up strange and was always told she could do no wrong. After the deaths, who wouldn't get a lot stranger when every single person in the town believed you did it? Even if she hadn't, it'd drive most people insane.

Shirley Jackson is a master at turning normal people into monsters, and this book is no different.

I know a ton of modern horror writers who give this author major props and I have to say, it's all very well deserved. :) Bravo!

Now if only we as a people hadn't driven this author into agoraphobia, seclusion, and persecution... until she died, alone, before she had even turned fifty. She wrote about what she knew, after all.

Chilling. ...more

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Nov 19, 2018 Evgeny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

A group reads with the following people: Ashley, Ginger, and Jeff. I will update the list if other people will join (I am totally NOT looking at you, Dan 2.0).

The less I say about the plot the less spoilers I give - I consider the usual blurbs for this book to be quite spoilerish. ~~In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.~~
Hobbit Hole

Sorry wrong tale. Let me start again. In a lonely house there lived Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood, her sister Constance Blackwood, and their uncle Julian Blackwood. T ...more

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Jan 31, 2021 Emily (Books with Emily Fox) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks

This is a great example of a popular book I simply don't get.

Maybe I would need to analyze it to enjoy it but... I didn't care enough for that.

Not bad, just not for me. ...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Jason by: Jennifer (aka EM)

Shelves: 2013, devil-made-me, reviewed

I’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychological suspense genre, I’m pretty convinced she was not limited by this label, nor would she have been by any other, and this work would most likely fall into the “other” category. But there’s no reason to take my word for it; even Oliver (view spoiler) found himself drawn to her work, enthralled by her words, and I’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychological suspense genre, I’m pretty convinced she was not limited by this label, nor would she have been by any other, and this work would most likely fall into the “other” category. But there’s no reason to take my word for it; even Oliver (view spoiler) found himself drawn to her work, enthralled by her words, and taken in by her characters to such an extent that his appetite for Jackson’s novel was all-consuming. He practically devoured the story in one sitting!

It took me a bit more than a single sitting, but whatever remains of this story Oliver left for me I nonetheless enjoyed. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Jackson’s final novel, and somewhat melds ideas and themes prevalent in “The Lottery” and in The Haunting of Hill House. The first-person narrator is an 18 year-old infant, a childish adult not unlike the kids from Dogtooth with their alarming degree of worldlessness, and through the course of the narrative, we (the reader) find ourselves being duped several times over as our impressions of the characters are formed and reformed, morphing as quickly and as seemingly effortlessly as a T-1000. Are the villagers as chillingly terrible as Mary Katherine Blackwood would have us believe, and as we are confident she herself believes? Is there perhaps something more deviant and sinister to the Mary Katherine whose older sister playfully admonishes as “Silly Merricat”? Or—and more likely—does the novel rather take place in a gray area of suspicion and questionable motives, screwing around with our sense of moral placement?

If I could rate with half-stars, I’d probably have given this a 3½. While the writing itself is top notch, the story ends kind of anticlimactically, and while the plot is well paced, one could often tell where it was going before it got there. Still, these are minor quibbles. A good Shirley Jackson book is a great book in general, as it turns out. ...more

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Apr 28, 2018 Lori rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A creepy little tale from a bullied psychopaths point of view. Stars rounded up from three on account of the villagers' choices before and after the main event. ...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of suspense with gothic overtones

Recommended to Florence (Lefty) by: Feliks Drzerzhinsky

Shelves: psycho-mental, lit-usa, reviewed, suspense, 2013, horror, classics-modern

Just plain creepy and oozing atmosphere. I won’t say much, went in cold and so should you. Not horror, no gore or monsters, it’s better than that. We’re talking the frailties of the human mind - MADNESS! We outgrow our fear of creatures that go bump in the night; so immured by the constant bombardment of blood & guts on TV that we can barely work up the energy to cringe anymore – but the fear of losing your mind? Now that one niggles, I know I have my bad days. So yeah, stories like this work f ...more

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Dec 03, 2018 Jeff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads

Shirley Jackson was always a unique writer, with seeming innocuous stories which have an uneasy undercurrent of rage and craziness bubbling beneath the surface.

I’m definitely down with that. When I was a teacher, one of my favorite Jackson stories to teach was “Charles” rather than “The Lottery”. Both stories percolate (“Charles” is meant to be funny in a Dennis the Menace runs amok kind of way) until the big reveals at the end. Zigging when you thought she would zag – Twilight Zone for the lit Shirley Jackson was always a unique writer, with seeming innocuous stories which have an uneasy undercurrent of rage and craziness bubbling beneath the surface.

I’m definitely down with that. When I was a teacher, one of my favorite Jackson stories to teach was “Charles” rather than “The Lottery”. Both stories percolate (“Charles” is meant to be funny in a Dennis the Menace runs amok kind of way) until the big reveals at the end. Zigging when you thought she would zag – Twilight Zone for the literati – or people who read the New Yorker.

Here, she lets her flag of oddity fly from the beginning. Merricat Blackwood, the book’s teenaged narrator, has issues. (view spoiler) As she runs errands, you can gauge the tension between her family and the town, but don’t quite know what the underlying cause is.

This book reads like an Addams Family episode without the jokes, the 7 foot tall butler, the disembodied hand and cousin It. It’s an eccentric family dialed up to 11. And in real life, rural/small townsfolk usually have a built-in aversion to the eccentric. Jackson modeled her fictional town after North Bennington, Vermont.

About the ending: (view spoiler)

Many critics consider this Jackson’s best work. My only word of caution is to not go into this book expecting a horror novel; it isn’t. It’s foremost a character study that has elements of a mystery. Jackson’s portrait of the sisters is sympathetic with portions of her trademark dark humor.

This was a buddy read with members in good standing of the Pantsless League of the Eccentric.

...more

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𝙼&#x1d692...: BOTM: We have Always Live in a Castle(Spoilers)	1	4	Jan 16, 2021 07:21AM
𝙼&#x1d692...: BOTM: We have Always Live in a Castle(No Spoliers)	1	1	Jan 16, 2021 07:21AM
The R.E.A.D. Book...: December 2020 - We Have Always Lived in the Castle	16	17	Dec 27, 2020 08:00AM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Book about a girl and her family who live in a castle, I think the girl poisons everyone but her sister? Probably fantasy, and I think the girl's name is Mary Catherine, merricat for short. Came out before 2016. [s]	5	929	Dec 14, 2020 07:08AM

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About Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson

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Shirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for her dystopian short story, "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown Ameri ...more

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“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.” — 676 likes

“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.” — 319 likes

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