From the Bookshelf of On Paths Unknown…

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Shirley Jackson

Start date: December 8, 2015

Discussion: AMERICAN/SOUTHERN GOTHIC

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AMERICAN/SOUTHERN GOTHIC

We Have Always Lived In The Castle ENDING SPOILERS Chapters 8, 9 and 10.
By Traveller · 79 posts · 223 views

last updated Jan 20, 2016 05:21AM

We Have Always Lived In The Castle Chapters 5, 6 and 7.
By Traveller · 39 posts · 19 views

last updated Dec 18, 2015 09:51AM

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What Members Thought

Apr 23, 2015 Nandakishore Mridula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

When they teach you public speaking, there is a concept called "ho-hum". This is a brief statement at the very starting point of the speech, sufficiently interesting so that the audience will immediately sit up and take notice. It is the "hook" with which the speaker snares them.

I have found that this works very well in narrative fiction too. If the first paragraph is sufficiently interesting, the reader continues long enough to get pulled into the story. While this is not essential, many great ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Paul rated it it was ok

Shelves: gothic

2.5 stars
A slice of American gothic and an everyday tale of mass murder and agoraphobia. The plot is pretty well known, although the plot of the recent film may confuse this as it bears limited relation to the book. It must be said that Jackson can write well and can set a scene. It is also interesting to see that American authors can write about entitled upper class families as well as English authors. This lot are as dysfunctional as anything Waugh created. Jackson has also added to the panthe 2.5 stars
A slice of American gothic and an everyday tale of mass murder and agoraphobia. The plot is pretty well known, although the plot of the recent film may confuse this as it bears limited relation to the book. It must be said that Jackson can write well and can set a scene. It is also interesting to see that American authors can write about entitled upper class families as well as English authors. This lot are as dysfunctional as anything Waugh created. Jackson has also added to the pantheon of prominent American teenage characters of this era: Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, Holden Caulfield, Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar, to name a few. Merricat is an entirely unreliable narrator and it is pretty clear from very early on, who actually poisoned the family with arsenic. This is a trope which bothered me, women are always the ones who kill by poison.
The beginning does grab the reader’s attention:
“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 in my family is dead.”
Cousin Charles, who arrives about halfway is a good portrayal of an entitled patriarchal male and is unable ultimately to destroy the running of the household. Charles has that sense of entitlement you expect of his class and gender, but unfortunately the two sisters have it too and the author’s attempts to make Merricat likeable didn’t work with me.
Despite the villagers being portrayed in a negative light, my sympathies were with them, they at least worked for a living. Merricat’s dislike of them and her descriptions of them as being, grey, colourless and an anonymous mob speak of a sort of upper class entitlement and a hatred of the outsider which is as disturbing as the shenanigans within the family. I recognize there are themes of women taking back power but, this is limited by the stultifying setting.
Although well written, I just didn’t find this convincing and much of it irritated me.
...more

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Nov 06, 2016 Jennifer rated it really liked it

What a delicious, creepy, dark story. What else can one say?

16 likes · Like · see review

Feb 08, 2021 Tracy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mystery, adult-fiction, horror, library-books, borrowed, spooky, murder-murder, spells, gothic

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

7 likes · Like · see review

Jul 30, 2017 Jonathan Eisen rated it really liked it

Merricat is one of my favorite narrators. I unfortunately predicted the big reveal pretty early, but it didn't make the book any less enjoyable or disturbing. ...more

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Oct 17, 2015 Mala rated it liked it

Shelves: disturbing, interesting-crazy-weird, american-writers, read-in-2015, female-writer

3.5 stars.

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 23, 2016 Chinook rated it it was amazing

Shelves: america, 500-women

At first I was thinking that this wasn't very freaky. But as time, and pages, went on, the tininess of the world of Constance, Merricat and Julian started to really creep me out. Those townspeople. Creepy Charles. And the way after the big incident that their world contracts even further.

It's almost enough to put me off of sugar. ...more

1 like · Like · see review