WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE BY SHIRLEY JACKSON
PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS (PAPERBACK), 2009, FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1962
158 PAGES
This book is part of my Popsugar Reading Challenge 2015. The category for this book is ‘a book you can read in a day’.
I chose this book at random from a list of books that had 200 pages or less. I didn’t even know what the book was about when I chose it. The only other Shirley Jackson novel I’ve read is The Haunting of Hill House which I love. The title intrigued me.
BLURB FROM THE COVER
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn’t leaving the Blackwoods alone. And when Cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Merricat must do everything in her power to protect her remaining family.
EXTRACT
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
REVIEW
We Have Always Lived In The Castle was brilliant – in a twisted, creepy Gothic way. I loved Jackson’s novella. So much happens in so few pages. Jackson certainly knows how to create tension and atmosphere. I literally had slivers of ice crawling down my spine as Merricat allowed me brief access into her warped and twisted world. We Have Always Lived In The Castle is a brilliant example of using an unreliable narrator. There is a revelation in the final chapter about how the rest of the family really died. This isn’t much of a revelation and I suspected the truth long before this point. However, this doesn’t detract from the chills I got reading We Have Always Lived In The Castle. Creepy, brilliant an atmospheric – absolutely loved it.
RATING
