It's the final #bookreview of this year's spooky season, and I finally, finally finished Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Perfect timing.
I read The Haunting of Hill House in maybe a week, which seemed long enough, but a full year ago I started this book, and only recently did I finish it. Hence the review today.
That may not seem like an auspicious start, but that is of no fault of the book itself.
To be fair, I started this book last Halloween season, but only barely. Then I set it aside and completely forgot about it, just left it gathering dust on my "currently reading" Goodreads list, until THIS Halloween season, when I not only remembered it, but restarted it.
Mary Katherine Blackwood (Merricat) is our narrator who leads us through this beautiful, haunting story.
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 else in my family is dead.
I am not entirely sure I can use the word "atmospheric" enough to describe this book. The entire story hinges on its atmosphere; the prose practically drips with it. It is every example of haunting, of unreliable narrator, of unease, of greed, of manipulation, of heartache.
“I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat.
"I always want to frighten them more.”
Merricat and her sister, Constance, live with Uncle Julian. They are loners, away from the nearby village, because of the terrible thing that happened in their past. Everyone else in the family, Merricat explains to us, is dead. They've all been poisoned, and Constance was believed to be to blame. Their house is a sanctuary from the villagers, a weird little mysterious sanctuary; and I do mean weird.
The entire home is odd, because Merricat's existence with her sister is odd. And that existence is odd, because Merricat herself is odd.
And then their odd little existence is disturbed with the arrival of Charles, a cousin who disrupts the home, and Merricat's comfortable routine.
“I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.”
“Every touch he made on the house must be erased.”
“There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.”
“I would have to find something else to bury here and I wished it could be Charles.”
Charles is the catalyst for change, or at least, for an examination and culmination. And then disaster strikes, as it must do, and truths come out, to the reader at least, as they must do. And then the house is left in ruins and Merricat's childish, uncanny understanding and existence is restored.
“I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die.”
After a mob and a fire and a confession, Merricat and Constance return to what is left of their home, their house which personifies so much of Merricat's existence. It is left in disarray, partly ruined, charred, but the two sisters eke out some form of life there. I keep using the word existence because that is what it is; it is the two of them in their own little world, all odd and uncanny and eerie, and this is the world that Merricat clings to, that she fears disruption to.
And this is the world we leave the sisters in, in what is left of their house, all atmospheric and unnerving and yet beautiful.
“We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.”
But in her voice, in her imaginings, the destroyed house protects them, and her sanctuary becomes a fortress, a castle even, which is of course where the title comes from.
“Our house was a castle, turreted and open to the sky.”
This book is lovely and spooky and a perfect Halloween read. I am ashamed it took me so long to read it, but I will return to it again one year, and I recommend that you do as well.
Have you read this classic? I am finding I love Shirley Jackson's work more and more; do you have any favourite pieces by her?
Recommend them below or via my contact page. And Happy Halloween!