We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

"A change was coming, and nobody knew it but me."

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As my flat-mate can attest to, I am a massive scaredy-cat. The kind that brings other people joy in their disproportionate reactions to scary things. So after watching the Netflix adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House (also written by Shirley Jackson) I was apprehensive about her recommendation to read this. I needn't have been. While this isn't scary in the slightest, it is brilliantly creepy in a psychological way and I enjoyed it far more because of that.

Merricat, Constance and Uncle Julian live a simple life in the Blackwood family home. After Constance is acquitted of the murder of the rest of the family, they are ostracized and abused by the local community. Despite this they are happy in their isolation. That is until a wily cousin shows up unexpectedly and jeopardises everything Merricat has worked so hard to protect.

From the very beginning of this book, I knew I wasn't going to be able to put it down. Merricat Blackwood is a fascinating character, and the way that Jackson writes her made it so easy for me to conjure an image of her in my head. The character's speech has a wonderful monotone feeling, that to me is reminiscent of Christina Ricci's Wednesday Addams. As well as this there is an incongruence between her age and the way that she speaks that makes her seem much younger than her eighteen years. These atypical traits; as well as being hateful and sociopathic but also clearly fearful and vulnerable, make her so much more captivating as a narrator.

Cousin Charles is also a really well written character. In him you feel an ominous force, altogether authoritarian and so obviously opposite to the other members of the Blackwood family. He represents everything that threatens the status quo and the the delicate balance of their quiet existence.

Shirley Jackson has expertly created an atmosphere of uneasiness throughout the novel, purposefully keeping you off-balance and feeling like you are constantly 1 step behind. Her intentional omissions make her one of the best writers of madness and psychosis that I have read to date.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a brilliant book about otherness and persecution. It's genius lies in the frustration that evokes in the reader. I urge everyone to read this book, it won't take you long but I guarantee that it will make you think!

H x