All Hallows Read Review | We Have Always Lived in the Castle | Shirley Jackson

Friends, All Hallows Read is just the most fun. Giving a book instead of candy?! This is my DREAM! Although, let’s be real, I love candy. But I probably love books more, and I’m always looking for reasons to give them as gifts, so this is perfect. In honor of this most wonderful event, Brittany, Alyssa, and I did a little Halloween book gifting so that we could all participate and have fun, and I’m so excited to be reviewing WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson, gifted to me by the lovely Alyssa. I’m going to be reading Brittany’s gifts (YES OMG she gave us two books) and reviewing them SOON. I’m still actually reading them. But! There is a book to review today! Let’s get to it.

Title: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Author: Shirley Jackson
Genre: Horror, Psychological Thriller
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Publisher: Penguin Classics
Release date: October 31, 2006
Source: Gifted from Alyssa

Summary: Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

So confession time: I don’t read a TON of horror books. It’s just not something that I gravitate towards. But I can always get down with a good psychological thriller. You know, when my head gets all EFFED WITH and the characters are bananas and it’s so completely BIZARRE that it’s kind of stunning (in a good way). WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson is this kind of book. Not many big scares–in fact, not really any scares at all–but it’s strength comes from unequivocally messed up lives and behaviors of the Blackwood sisters. It’s really good stuff.

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE is the story of two sisters–Constance and Mary Katherine (known as “Merricat”)–who live in virtual solitude with their elderly Uncle Julian in a very small town where they are the butt, not just of jokes, but of actual malicious behavior from the other townspeople. Turns out that six years before, Constance and Mary Katherine’s parents, brother, and aunt (Uncle Julian’s wife) were all killed at the dinner table when they put arsenic-laced sugar on their berries. Constance was tried for murdering them, but she was acquitted. Ever since then, she’s barely left the house, and her younger sister leaves the house to brave the locals to get their groceries and run errands. When one of their long-lost cousins shows up and clearly has some bad intentions, secrets are revealed, the townspeople commit a horrible act, and not everyone makes it to the end of the book. Through it all, the sisters fight their pariah-ness by BEING CREEPY.

When I first started reading WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, I was hit right away by the writing. For all that Shirley Jackson isn’t writing a book that’s meant to be pretty, she has an excellent way with words. This is the very first paragraph in the book, and it’s so captivating and weird that it makes me die:

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.

This paragraph is the PERFECT introduction to our main character, Merricat. She’s BIZARRE. Like, so weird. She lives in this huge house with her older sister and her elderly and very unwell uncle, and she’s got all these weird superstitious quirks. She buries things for protection, she thinks up “safe words” and writes them in her food and eats them, swearing to never utter them again so that nothing bad happens to her or her sister. Merricat and Constance live a VERY regimented life, only going into town on certain days of the week (well, Merricat anyway–Constance doesn’t leave the house), and only walking home via very particular routes. Being in Merricat’s head is a twisted place. You can tell that something is off with her, almost right away. She’s not “allowed” to do certain things or go certain places. But all three Blackwoods just go about their business, secluding themselves and staying away from everyone.

Shirley Jackson is a classic horror writer of some renown, and that’s really no surprise. She creates this really unsettlingly weird vibe that starts with the characters but bleeds through to the setting, the house, everything. The villain in this story isn’t just one person, either. There’s the cousin, Charles, who shows up and is mean to Merricat and Uncle Julian and manipulative of Constance, is certainly a tool. But the bigger villains are the townspeople, who are downright horrible. I just wanted to smack most of them all the time. Their incredible cruelty drives a lot of the Blackwood’s oddness. ‘

The one mystery that threads through the whole of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE surrounds the murder of those family members. The outcome isn’t super surprising, but I get the feeling that Shirley Jackson didn’t really think it was a huge thing either because there’s literally one sentence reveal about it. But truthfully, the real driving drama is the effed up-ness of the Blackwoods, especially Merricat. That alone makes WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE a perfectly creepy Halloween read.