We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Published: 1962
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Length: 05:32 (246 pages)
While not quite on the same level of The Haunting of Hill House, I still really enjoyed this. Shirley Jackson is a master of atmosphere and characterization, particularly at taking somewhat bizarre characters and writing them in a believable way.
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.
What a great opening! In this scene, Mary, who goes by Merricat, is in town to do the week’s shopping, and we see how the townsfolk treat her. They despise her and tell her so to her face. They want her and her sister to just leave town and never come back, for reasons we don’t yet know. It’s heartbreaking to witness how cruel these people can be to this family, but they manage to make their home life as pleasant as can be.
There’s an eerie and surreal feeling to the narrative. I wondered while reading this if Iain Banks found inspiration in this for his fist novel The Wasp Factory, as Merricat did remind me somewhat of Frank Cauldhame. There’s also a feeling of mystery, the mystery of what happened to this family and the mystery of what’s to come. Jackson writes fascinating characters, and there’s a few in this story, but Merricat is just fantastic. Having been isolated and hated by everyone in town during her formative years, she’s now grown superstitious and emotionally stunted, which is tragic but very fun to read.
I still haven’t read any of Jackson’s short fiction, including The Lottery, or any of her early novels or non-fiction, so I will be getting to some of that this year.
11 Comments
FictionFan
Merricat is such a fantastic creation, isn’t she? I thought this one read like the story of the how the traditional old witch in the cottage became that old witch in the first place. I could well imagine an old Merricat with her cat frightening all the neighbourhood children… 🙂
Rob
She really is, and yes I could absolutely see her turning into the scary witch in the woods!
Ruthiella
I think I liked this title a tad more than The Haunting of Hill House…but it was the first title I read. The order in which I read things often has an influence on my bookish favoritism. I have a collection of most if not all of her short stories and I have read a few. But short stories aren’t really my jam. I want to read some of her earlier novels, now that they are back in print.
Rob
I’m also not a huge short story person. I can’t read a lot of them in a row, so I’ll sometimes read a collection over a number of months, which is probably what I’ll do if I pick up a collection of her’s.
WordsAndPeace
I have only read The Lottery, quite special. I need to try her longer pieces of literature
Rob
I would personally start with The Haunting of Hill House, but both of these were very good!
Silvia
I too loved this book. As for The Lottery and her other short stories, I found a great audio for it. When listened to all of them, they all gained even more in the full collection. Narrators varied, which made the tone of some of the stories very interesting.
I had never heard of The Wasp Factory. (Did you also know there’s an eerie black and white movie of this book? I remember having watched the movie a long time ago. It’s quite impressive. But the book was fabulous.)
Rob
I didn’t know there was an old film adaptation of this, actually. I heard they’re making a new one that’s due to come out in the next year or two.
I might have to check out that audio collection. I like the idea of a new narrator for each story.
Silvia
A new film, that’s fabulous. And that audio rocked. She has my deep admiration. Short stories are difficult, yet she has a variety that, altogether, produced quite an effect on me. The different narrators added quality, -it was needed, some stories are told by women, others by men, so it was quite proper to match them.
Rose City Reader
I completely messed up my reading of this book because I somehow had the idea before I started that she was a ghost. I have no idea why. So I kept waiting for the story to explain how she was a ghost and everyone in the story was dead. Of course, that never happened and I missed the whole experience of the book. Talk about operator error!
Rob
You are not the only one! I noticed a couple of other people on Goodreads experienced the same thing. That never really occurred to me, but I can definitely see how someone could come to that conclusion at the beginning of the novel.