We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Paperback, 1982

Status

Available

Call number

FIC G Jac

Publication

Popular Library

Pages

173

Description

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.

Description

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...

Collection

Barcode

4134

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1962-09-21

Physical description

173 p.; 6.8 inches

ISBN

0445083212 / 9780445083219

Media reviews

Of the precocious children and adolescents of mid-twentieth-century American fiction ... none is more memorable than eighteen-year-old "Merricat" of Shirley Jackson's masterpiece of Gothic suspense We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962).

Lexile

920L

User reviews

LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
Don’t you just love that rare feeling when you read your first book by a writer, and just know: “I’m going to have to read every single thing she’s ever written”? That feeling of giddy richness, from having a whole authorship waiting? I got it when I read my first Muriel Spark, when I
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stumbled onto Amelié Nothomb, when I first ventured into Sara Lidman’s northern tales.

And only about thirty pages into We Have Always Lived in the Castle it hits me with full force.

This wonderfully balanced, delightfully disturbed and gently weird little gem of a book is about Merricat and her sister Constance, who live together with their dying uncle and a cat in an ancient mansion. They are the only remaining scraps of the Blackwood family, after a poisoned dinner killed everybody else. Constance was tried for mass murder but acquitted, and now the three live in isolation. Only Merricat ever leaves the house, when she ventures into the village twice a week to shop, where she’s faced with the villagers open fear, scorn and mockery. The rest of the time Merricat spends in the forest, with rituals, protective talismans and home-spun magic. Which doesn’t work as it supposed to. One day Cousin Charles bangs the door, ready to tear Merricat’s carefully constructed rules into pieces.

Jackson does a splendid job in letting us see the world slightly twisted through Merricat’s eyes, and uses the few elements and devices of this simple tale to perfection. Here nothing is introduced without having a significance for the story. The twists of the plot might not be all that surprising, but is presented with such care and elegance they still give me goosebumps.

It’s one of those books where you anxiously check the page numbers, hoping there is more left than it seems. For heaven’s sake, don’t miss this!

(If you do read an edition with Jonathan Lethem’s introduction though, I would consider saving that until AFTER you read the book. It kinda gives away the whole story.)
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LibraryThing member richardderus
The Book Report: A classic of American suspense literature, this is the story of the Blackwood family, told by Mary Katherine "Merricat", of her life with elder sister Constance and elderly uncle Julian. They live in the biggest, grandest house around their New England village, surrounded by
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villagers whose suspicions of them are well-founded: Constance and Julian are survivors of a mass murder, a poisoning of the entire Blackwood family, for which crime Constance was tried and acquitted. Merricat, ten years younger than Constance, is the classic unreliable narrator, and a person very young for her age. The isolation the family lives in is voluntary, though no one tries too terribly hard to break it until cousin Charles Blackwood shows up with designs on Constance and her money. The realignment of the family constellation doesn't sit well, or wear well, and the end of the book closely resembles the beginning, only more so. The journey between is highly creepy, and just a little bit disturbing.

My Review: This isn't a horror novel in any way. It's horrible, in that it's got eerie atmospherics galore and Gothic characters and events in spades, but there is not one ounce of gore and no one speaks in tongues or is possessed by even a minor demon. The characters aren't particularly believeable, nor is the plot particularly plausible, but the fun of a book like this is that it's improbable but somehow satisfyingly so...it's so much fun to listen to little Merricat go through her OCD rituals, and her extreme clarity of character analysis makes the events of the book happen; somehow it all just *fits* in Jackson's universe, though not in yours or mine. Well, mine anyway; for all I know, LT could be chock-a-block with Merricats....

All in all, I found the trip Shirley Jackson takes me on in this short book to be very worth taking. I wasn't blown away by the book, but I liked it and I think most readers of literary fiction would as well. If you liked The Aspern Papers, you would most likely enjoy this book. Imagine a Saki story with a violent punchline...that's what Jackson delivers.

Yes, recommended, and without trepidation. At least, not much trepidation. o.O
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LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
I love reading books that are somewhat “off” in tone, and this book was no exception. This novel, first published in 1962, was recommended to me as a quick read by two LibraryThing members (_Zoe_ and richarderus).

The story begins with eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine Blackwood (also known as
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Merricat) returning to her large and lovely home after a shopping trip to the nearby village. She seems very paranoid around the townsfolk, but, before the first chapter is finished, our curiosity is aroused as to why. We go on to learn that Merricat lives with an older sister and an ailing Uncle Julian because both of her parents are dead. As the story progresses, we learn more details about the deaths of Merricat’s parents as well as the concurrent death of Uncle Julian’s wife Dorothy.

The odd remaining family members live together fairly well secluded until cousin Charles Blackwood arrives and precipitates a turbulent change to their precarious living situation. Disliked intensely by Merricat, Charles becomes the target of her hexes in an effort to drive him from their house.

I loved this book. It was a short, but utterly compelling, read in all of its gothic finery. I found its prose very lyrical as themes repeated in a kind of a rhythmic beat.

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!


I understand this novel’s becoming a cult classic. As a result, I very much look forward to reading other writing by Shirley Jackson.
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LibraryThing member cmbohn
Mary Katherine Blackwood lives in an old home with her older sister Constance and Uncle Julian. They live a very isolated life. As they struggle to deal with the consequences of a recent tragedy, a stranger comes to visit - their cousin Charles. His arrival sets in motion a chain of events that
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will be even more shocking and dramatic.

It's hard to review this one, because I don't want to give away any of the big plot twists and ruin it for anyone. This was a quick read and I couldn't go to bed until I had finished it. Jackson is great at creating a slightly creepy, menacing feel to a seemingly normal atmosphere and then wrenching it into something even darker. It was hard to categorize this book too - psychological Gothic might be the best description. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member CarlosMcRey
The title of the novel is no accident, for it is as gothic a tale as any that was ever set in a crumbling castle on the banks of the Rhine. Its treatment of human evil, isolation and madness could easily qualify it as the pinnacle of 20th Century American Gothic.

A shadow has fallen across the
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house of Blackwood. Though once a prominent family, a possibly accidental poisoning has reduced their numbers to three (two sisters, an uncle) and made the townspeople suspicious of the survivors. The uncle, Julian, has been left physically crippled and one of the sisters, Constance, has developed a phobia about the world outside the house which does not prevent her from accepting visitors. It is left to the younger sister, Merikat (short for Mary Katherine), to venture into town on necessary errands.

Gothic literature often features singular characters, individuals who seem eerily plausible yet who are warped in a way that makes them unlike anyone else we've ever encountered. Merikat, who is the narrator and thus our guide through this story, is just such a character. It is clear that she views the townspeople with hostility, going so far as to craft charms--ordinary household items such as books or mirrors placed in odd locations or strange configurations--to keep the world at bay.

But soon it does intrude, in the figure of Charles, a cousin from an estranged branch of the family. His healthiness and level headedness seem to promise an opening up of the Blackwood home, a return to normality. But Merikat sees in him a representative of the crudity and selfishness of the outside world and seeks to drive him out through more and more powerful charms. The last of these results in a terrible reaction from the townspeople which sends the Blackwoods into greater isolation, leading to a hauntingly melancholy end to the story.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an incomparable achievement, a story that will equally charm and disturb in ways that sometimes can be almost intolerable. And you will probably never forget Merikat Blackwood.
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LibraryThing member veilofisis
I have never been thoroughly enchanted by Shirley Jackson. I find that her writing—while generally taut and suspenseful (and even sometimes profound)—often falls rather flat, which reminds me a bit of writers like Bram Stoker (for whom I share a similar opinion). Now, that may seem like a
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contradictory sentence (and I suppose it is), so let’s clarify: there is a quality to her prose that is difficult to define—it is immediate, to-the-point; but this immediacy can sometimes border on the brusque side of the equation, lending to her work the curious image of Gothic elegance walking hand-in-hand with the pulps.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a book that I read in two sittings and left with a high opinion of—a five-star opinion, really; but the more I thought about it, the less I loved it: and it seems the same way for everything I read of Ms. Jackson’s, with the (signifigant) exception of her two more famous pieces: 'The Lottery' and The Haunting of Hill House. Aside from those two masterpieces, Jackson’s fiction is just not something I enjoy enough to come back to, though I may find it interesting—even spellbinding!—the first time around.

The novel is well-plotted, but its premise is somewhat sketchy: after their entire family is poisoned (save one uncle), two sisters (one of whom the crime is believed to have been perpetrated by) retreat into utter solitude in their curiously well-kept ancestral home somewhere in rural, any-town USA; their isolation borders on mutual delusion (and eventually descends into just that), leading to a climax that is, unfortunately, so stale it almost reads as satire.

Jackson’s narrative seems quite aware of its unlikelihood, and so it is somewhat jarring to see just how hard the woman will try to create plausibility where it is simply not going to happen. She’d be better off just rolling the dice and leaving us to our own capacity for suspension of disbelief, rather than attempting to mine realism from a character study whose power lies largely in its sense of fantasy. The premise itself is not totally implausible, but Jackson’s littering of tiny digressions becomes tiring and a little—yes, I’m going to say it—stupid. I feel at times, reading Castle, that my intelligence as a reader is being both stimulated and insulted at the same time.

I would suggest this for both hard-core Gothicists and for those who find the genre entirely annoying, which is a good illustration of how polarizing I find it. Jackson fans will appreciate her gracefully laconic prose and her generally pessimistic world-view, but her detractors will find this more than a little wooden. I’d reiterate that I find this one of Jackson’s stronger works (though it's certainly no Haunting of Hill House), and I really did enjoy reading it, but it’s one that’s a hell of a lot better in the thick of the reading than it is upon deeper reflection. So bottom line: I’d recommend it, with some serious reservations. It’s certainly better than most of the ‘suspense’ drek taking up space on your local library’s shelves, but it’s not the goldmine of subtlety and emotion I had been led to believe it was.

Shirley Jackson observes some real truth in her writing: I just wish she was able to communicate it without leaving such a humdrum taste in my mouth. I’d love to hate this novel, but I can’t; I’d love to love this novel, but I can’t: and you’d think that that would be the mark of something really important—really rare—but it’s just…not: this is remarkably pedestrian stuff, and I’m simply left wanting.
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LibraryThing member edwinbcn
The best claim of We have always lived in the castle as a literary masterpiece is that it is a fairly simple story that is nonetheless far from straightforward, and keeps readers puzzled long after finished reading. There is not much of a story, and some of the action in the book is quite absurd.
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The sisters, Mary Katherine ('Merricat') and Constance, and their uncle Julian are somewhat unusual, but not in the extreme.

Readers who find the novel spooky or stange, are in fact on a par with the villagers in the novel, who see things that are not there. The novel presents a fine example of the suspicion of a small-town community in the United States of that time, harking back to the witch-hunt episode in Salem, but also casting long shadows into our time, as it seems a part of human nature to be attracted and repelled by the unusual, to reject it and venture to gloat and look into it. The visit of Mrs Wright and Helen Clarke is nothing very unusual, and in as far as anything looks out of the ordinary neighbours' visit, it should be remembered that the whole episode is related by Merricat who cannot be taken as a reliable narrator.

The home of the Blackwood family is not a castle, but does stand within its own grounds, somewhat removed from the village. After the fire, which destroys a large part of the house, the home is said to resemble as castle. The perceptual transformation of the house into a castle, that is to say, when it is revealed to resemble a castle after parts have burnt away, suggests that the true state of things should be looked for underneath reality.

Merricat is by far the most intriguing character in the novel. Although she is described as being 18 years old, she appears a bit younger, and the ambivalence between the ages of 15/16 and 18 casts doubt on the innocent nature of her interests in magic, or rather witch craft. For sure, she has an interest in poisonous plants, charms, and rituals to avert events. There is an element on compulsion in her actions. In a novel with relatively little action, it seems significant that the major events were precipitated by Merricat, whether consciously or unconsciously. The fire seems the result of an unconscious act, but is should be remembered that the outcome of the event is what Merricat had apparently originally hoped to achieve with that other evil act, namely to remain alone with her older sister in the home.

Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Raven9167
This story was a marvelous character study. While there are a few peripheral characters, most of the book is devoted to Merricat, Constance, Uncle Julian and Charles. I felt that much of this was a tug of war between the two dominant characters (Merricat and Charles) over the allegiance of
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Constance, with Uncle Julian serving the role of illuminating the back story. It is evident early on that Merricat, the narrator, is quite unreliable, and this is one of those novels that had me actively wondering how very different this would have been if it had been told from, say, Charles's perspective. I also enjoyed how my sympathies were played upon throughout: do I feel badly for Merricat? Charles? I was tugged back and forth. All of this is by way of saying that Ms. Jackson has created unforgettable characters here with neuroses that appear entirely believable and not at all over the top, and this is what struck me most about the story.

Ms. Jackson also creates an extraordinary sense of place. Having lived in New England all of my life, I know all too well these rural communities where others gossip and ostracize others for eccentricities. I also know many houses just like the Blackwood residence, though admittedly with less land.

Finally, I found it intriguing that the story spoke essentially of how a haunted house story gets started: a few traumatic events and a pinch of sheer weirdness and a murder and BOOM, you've got yourself a haunted house. A pleasant read for a Halloween season.
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LibraryThing member vivycakes
Creepy, ominous, and a bit sad. Mary Katherine "Merricat" & Constance Blackwood are agoraphobic sisters who have been happy with their secluded life in their large home, isolated from the village. They live with Merricat's cat Jonas and their uncle Julian, who is permanently ill from ingesting
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arsenic-laced sugar which killed the rest of the wealthy Blackwood family 6 years prior. (Constance did not have any of the sugar & Merricat had been sent to bed without dinner as punishment). Merricat is slightly less of a shut-in than Constance, going into the village every week to buy groceries and borrow books from the library. She is a very creepy and strange character, protective of her older sister, superstitious, and harboring an incredible deal of hatred toward the villagers. The villagers aren't exactly well-meaning, either - almost all of them regard the Blackwood sisters with intense animosity, since they believe Constance poisoned her family and got away with it. Merricat starts sensing that the Blackwoods' peaceful lives is about to be disrupted by some unwelcome change, which she tries to prevent by means of sympathetic magic. A short, strange but powerful story that explores family relationships, mental illness, persecution, class relations, and disturbing sides to everyday people.
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LibraryThing member write-review
The Danger Within

Constance Blackwood and her younger sister Mary Katherine (Merricat) live with their infirm Uncle Julian in a big old rambling house on a large estate and set apart from the town. Six years previously someone poisoned the rest of the Blackwoods at dinner by putting arsenic in their
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dessert of blackberries. Since Merricat had been sent to her room for being bad and Constance didn’t eat blackberries, suspicion fell on Constance. However, an inquiry found her not guilty, though the townspeople always suspected she, in fact, murdered her mother, father, brother, and aunt, and severely injured her uncle, and so ostracized her. Constance herself is agoraphobic and will only venture as far as the house’s backyard. Merricat takes care of any errands and shopping in town, where people usually give her a wide berth or make fun of her. She, in turn, hates them all and has thoughts of killing them, watching them die, and seeing the town destroyed. She’s quite content to live alone in the big Blackwood house with Constance and Uncle Julian, whom she constantly promises herself to treat more kindly. To protect herself and Constance, she has nailed to trees and buried around the house various familiar objects that belonged to the family. Readers learn what happened to the Blackwoods, as well as gain insight into the deceased Blackwoods, through the ramblings of Uncle Julian, who busily works on a history of the incident and the Blackwood family.

As the novel progresses and we spend time with Merricat, we can see that she isn’t quite right, that she feels comfortable and kindly to one person only, her sister Constance, and that Constance is indulgent regarding Merricat and either oblivious to or accepting of her oddities, not to mention the not so secret “secret” they share. There’s always a sense of impending danger and Merricat always keeps her guard up, making her rounds of magical objects to ensure she and Constance remain safeguarded against the outside world. But then she starts having a bad feeling, a dread that something terrible is closing in on them, heightened when she discovers a book she’d nailed to a tree has fallen.

Charles Blackwood, a cousin, appears at their door and Constance invites him in. Merricat takes an immediate dislike to him and doesn’t hide her hatred of him. She resents that he beguiles Constance, coming between them, and recognizes him for what he is, a financial mercenary. When spying on his quarters in her father’s room, she discovers that he has left his pipe smoldering on the nightstand, she topples it into a wastebasket of newspapers. Later, it ignites a fire destroying the entire top flood of the house and bringing an invasion by the fire department and the townspeople. This permanently expels Charles, leads to Uncle Julian’s death, and leaves Constance and Merricat together alone with each other in three rooms forever. They subsist on Constance’s preserves from the basement, food from their garden in the back, protected by barriers established by Merricat, and penance offerings from townspeople to make up for their bad behavior the night of the fire.

What makes We Have Always Lived in the Castle so striking and absorbing is Jackson’s portrayals of Constance and especially Merricat, as well as their relationship. She never tells us that Constance suffers from agoraphobia or that Merricat is a sociopath. She shows us by taking us into Merricat’s mind, a very dark and disturbing place, conveying past and potential violence without any overt violence, just the sense that it could erupt at anytime. Readers will find it interesting to note that evil might move in two directions, depending on Merricat’s and the reader’s points of view. Merricat has it coming from the outside, from her deceased family, from the townspeople, and from Charles. Readers will eventually discover that the evil emanates from Merricat out to all of these parties with devastating consequences. Brilliant conjuring not to be missed.
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LibraryThing member upstairsgirl
Somehow, We Have Always Lived in the Castle manages to be both delightful and incredibly creepy. Jackson's narrator, Mary Katherine, leads the reader on a tour of sociopathology, horrifying groupthink, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and crippling agoraphobia as she and her sister Constance tremble
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through their lives as social outcasts, objects of fear and loathing but themselves fearing and loathing the village outside which their castle sits. Much as in Jackson's most widely-read short story, "The Lottery," the reader is presented with an upsetting view of social structure gone nightmarishly awry. The book is dark and upsetting, but also a quick, engaging read, and a brilliantly-written one at that.

Johnathan Lethem's introduction to the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition offers some insights into Jackson's inspiration for the novel and the way in which Jackson is viewed as having split her own personality into the two Blackwood daughters. I rather wish I'd saved the introduction until after reading the book, as I think Lethem's lengthy discussion of the parallels between this story and "The Lottery" deprive the reader to some degree of discovering what is really going on under Mary Katherine's serious and rambling narration.
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LibraryThing member jessicastatzer
I read this short book in two sittings. I was intersted in the characters and enjoyed the authors approach. Although the "who done it" was obvious early on she kept you reading just to see how it all played out in the end. I recommend this gothic horror to anyone wanting a non-violence laced creepy
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read.
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LibraryThing member passion4reading
Mary Katherine Blackwood has lived alone with her sister and their invalid uncle in a large old house outside a small unnamed American town after the rest of the family was poisoned, a crime for which Constance stood trial but was acquitted. Since then the villagers have looked on the small family
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with a mixture of terror and morbid fascination and the family has largely been left alone, receiving few visitors. Their daily routine changes dramatically when one day their cousin Charles arrives out of the blue and takes up residence in the house, much to Mary Katherine's chagrin. With tensions between the two running high, events soon spiral out of control.

This novella is narrated by Mary Katherine, affectionately called Merricat by her sister, and from the first page her flitting thoughts indicate an emotional lability and possible mental disorder, the tone of her musings being intrinsically disturbing and unhinged; Shirley Jackson has masterfully captured Merricat's character and created one of the most memorable and creepiest character in modern literature. The house itself is both a cage and a sanctuary and there is something very poignant about the situation of the family members who are mostly shunned by society.

The book is a master class in increasing the tension, slowly notching up the tension from the very first page to its violent conclusion, and while there's a degree of predictability to it, the sequence of events is anticipated, not dreaded. The revelation, three-quarters in, doesn't come as a surprise as the answer to the mystery was on the cards from the beginning, with clues scattered quite generously throughout the narrative. While the dramatic finale was unexpected and fitting, the actual ending falls curiously flat in my opinion and the anticipated final confrontation didn't materialise, though the final scene of the two women content playing house, with Constance refusing to face the changed reality of their situation, is quite chilling.
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LibraryThing member Stahl-Ricco
Strange, creepy, and slightly off - and a really cool read! Sort of like her short story, "The Lottery", but then again, it isn't. Two sisters, Mary Katherine and Constance, live with their Uncle Julian in the Blackwood house, where a terrible family murder occurred. And the people in town don't
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like any of the three! Throw in a strange cousin, a fire, and a cat named Jonas and add a dash of Shirley Jackson and voila! A very curious and wonderful read!

"Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?" Creepy!
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LibraryThing member Othemts
This mystery/thriller focuses on the survivors of the well-to-do Blackwood family six years after most of the family met their end when a poisoner put arsenic in the sugar for their dessert of berries. The novel is narrated by the teenager Mary Katherine or “Merricat” who had been sent to her
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room without dinner the night of the poisoning. Her Uncle Julian survived the poisoning but is severely disabled. The other survivor is Merricat’s elder sister Constance who did not take sugar on her berries and was tried and acquitted for the crime but is still seen as the villain in the local community. Only Merricat ventures outside of the family home to do the shopping and there meets with open derision toward her family from the villagers. This uneasy life is further disrupted when a cousin named Charles moves into the home in what only Merricat is initially able to recognize as an attempt to gain the Blackwood family fortune. Merricat is an unreliable narrator and she is convinced that she must protect her home using sympathetic magic while her only “friend” is a cat. I won’t go into the details of the revelations and incidents that follow but it is a moody and creepy novel balanced with sympathetic portrayals of unusual characters.
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LibraryThing member bibliovermis
I can't really categorize this book; it doesn't quite fit anywhere. It is entirely itself. It's not really a mystery, there's no true horror, and it's got very minimal suspense. What it does have is an insidious, neck-hair-raising, somehow humorous dread. I guess what I can most compare it to is an
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Edward Gorey illustration. I liked it very much!
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LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
Merricat (Mary Katherine) and her older sister Constance live with their disabled uncle Julian in a rambling old house that used to house many more family members. Merricat ventures into town to shop once a week - no more, as her neighbors are actively hostile and rude toward her.
However, there may
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be a very good reason for that hostility, as we gradually learn...

When the (we suspect) money-grubbing cousin Charles arrives on the scene, the precarious equilibrium that the two sisters have preserved in Blackwood House for the last six years will be disastrously upset.

This short book is a masterfully crafted, disturbing window into insanity - all the more so because I think that most of us can imagine wanting to eliminate all the things that upset us. We can all relate to wanting to protect those that love us. This writing shows how these urges, for these characters, gradually form a tightening garotte enclosing their lives, drawing them into an increasingly restricted tiny world of denial.
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LibraryThing member TheBoltChick
We Have Always Lived In The Castle excels in sheer creepiness. While I have heard it described as "horror" or "mystery" it really doesn't fit comfortably in either category. I think it really falls more into the psychological drama category, with a nice heaping cup of weirdness thrown in.

We see the
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story through the eyes of Merricat Blackwood. She and her sister Constance live in relative isolation up in their big house on the outside of town with their uncle Julian. The three are all that are left from their wealthy family. Uncle Julian is confined to a wheelchair and suffers from bouts of dementia. Constance is an agoraphobe who ventures no farther than her garden. We find out early on that the remainder of the family died of arsenic poisoning six years earlier.

As Merricat begins telling us the story, we immediately notice that she seems more childlike than her years. But very quickly we begin to realize she is truly disturbed. She lives her life through strict rituals and rules of her own creation. Quickly we realize she is amoral to the point of sociopathy. She is paranoid, insecure, and very angry. Talk about an unreliable narrator! But seeing the world and characters through her twisted view is what makes this novel so interesting. While many of the characters seem entirely one dimensional, this seems to come from the fact we are seeing them through Merricat's eyes.

While reading I couldn't help but compare Merricat to Eleanor from The Haunting Of Hill House. Both are insecure and have developed such a defensive posture, they have crossed the line to going on the offense. The themes of class warfare, self-imposed isolation, and repressed anger seem to run throughout Jackson's writings.

Creepy, disturbing, ominous, and completely engrossing. Definitely recommended!
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LibraryThing member bragan
The old Blackwood house was once home to a large family, until most of them were poisoned one night at dinner. Now there are three of them left: pleasant, domestic Constance, who was acquitted of the murders but can no longer bring herself to leave the house; young Mary Katherine (aka Merricat),
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much given to magical thinking and wishing people dead; and their old Uncle Julian, who survived ingesting the arsenic, but has never been the same since. The family's relations with the nearby village have never been the same, either, as they are hated, and gawped at, and feared.

It's a weird, weird book. A wonderfully creepy one, too, but it's a kind of creepiness that, well... creeps up on you. It starts out as a gentle sort of creepiness, more intellectual than visceral, but as I reached the last page, I was literally shuddering. What's odd is that I'm not sure entirely why I was shuddering. It feels like there are depths here that my conscious mind only dimly understands. Uncomfortable depths, hinting at uncomfortable realities.

It's pretty darned brilliant.
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LibraryThing member Aerrin99
Jackson's work - which has been recommended to me again and again - is an exceedingly eerie gothic wonder that sticks with you long after you're done reading.

It's a bit difficult to describe We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It is not horror, it is not especially scary, and it is very unusual in
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a lot of ways.

Mary Katherine, called Merricat, is our narrator, and she sets up our expectations for the book. She relates her day-to-day activities with such matter-of-fact frankness that we accept them (at first) almost without question. Twice a week, she must navigate the village, where everyone hates her and her family. She bears their suspicion and their scorn and their haunting refrains ("Merricat," said Connie, "would you like a cup of tea?") stoically in order to return to her fenced-in house and her sister and her invalid uncle.

As the story progresses, more and more details unfold, and it's not until halfway through the book when an unexpected cousin arrives and seems to be turning Constance away from Merricat that we start to wonder about the reliability of our narrator.

The final surprise is not really shocking, but it /is/ beautiful, and there is something intensely haunting about this story of two sisters who are ultimately loyal to each other above all else, and who thus become figures of both terror and legend for the local town.

Jackson has a fantastic touch with voice, with character, and with atmosphere. The neatness with which she unfolds the events surrounding Merricat and Constance and Uncle Julian is fascinating, and even now that sing-song refrain sticks in my head ("Oh no!" said Merricat, "You'll /poison/ me!").

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, and it took me awhile to get into it in part because of that. But I'm very glad I persisted - I feel like We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of those books that is an /experience/, and that you are always a little better for having had it.
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LibraryThing member isabelx
Fridays and Tuesdays were terrible days, because I had to go into the village. Someone had to go to the library, and the grocery; Constance never went past her own garden, and Uncle Julian could not. Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but
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only the simple need for books and food.

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is narrated by 18-year-old Mary Katherine Blackwood, six years after four members of her family were poisoned at the dinner table. Now the remaining members of the family, Mary Katherine, her older sister Constance (who was tried and acquitted of the murders), and their Uncle Julian, live a cloistered existence at Blackwood Farm. A few old friends still come to see them, but they are ostracised by the villagers, who had it in for the family even before the murders.

This is a really eerie story; none of the remaining Blackwoods are exactly stable, and you are kept wondering which of them was the poisoner, but you are also on their side against the relentlessly hostile villagers and scheming Cousin Charles.

I started reading it on the train yesterday, and finished it in bed last night.
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LibraryThing member kjharrison
This is one of those books that stays with you. I read it in the 1980s and still find myself thinking about it. It's perfect for teenager, who will understand it and be able to empathize with the main character. Early teens is also the perfect age for this wonderfully unpredictable story. Also one
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of Jackson's best novels.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
This is the quintessential ghost story, told from the inside out — a perfect blend of creepiness and tenderness, of believability and otherworldliness. The story is told beautifully, drawing inexorably toward a climax of destruction. A stunning work, I liked this even better than Jackson’s
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other classic of the genre, The Haunting of Hill House.
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LibraryThing member nbmars
Constance Blackwood, age 28, and her 18-year-old sister Merricat have lived alone in a mansion with their Uncle Julian for the past six years. The rest of the family was poisoned with arsenic at dinner one night. Constance, always the responsible one, took the blame for the poisoning but it is not
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totally clear for most of the book how it happened or who exactly did it, and Constance was never convicted. The townspeople, however, exact their own punishment, treating the family with overt and cruel contempt. Thus Constance is afraid to leave the house, and Merricat only does so as needed for supplies, but is terrified all the while.

Uncle Julian has been confined to a wheelchair since the arsenic poisoning, but Constance and Merricat are just as paralyzed from routine, fear, and stasis. Constance, imprisoned not only figuratively by the townspeople but literally by her own fear of others, cooks and cleans and cares for Uncle Julian. Merricat is crippled by a severe obsessive compulsiveness involving superstitious rituals, as well as an overwhelming desire to see all of her enemies dead.

When their cousin Charles arrives to try to get their money, the careful balance of their lives on the fringes of insanity is upended. Before long, they are attacked on all sides, and their very mental and physical survival is called into question.

Discussion: This short book explores the canker of class envy, the cruelty of persecution, and the contagion of mob-thinking. Less attention is devoted to the family’s pathologies, which are taken as givens.

The title evokes the Gothic mood of the book, not only for its darkness and fear, but also for the sharp divisions between the isolated Blackwoods and the villagers, who may not have the power of the purse, but have physical and psychological advantages over the Blackwoods.

Evaluation: This is a disturbing book, although its surrealism offers some protection to the reader. I concede it’s a powerful book, providing a great deal for discussion; however, it is not a very pleasant tale. Thus, I found it difficult to assign a rating; it seems masterful in many ways, but it was just a bit creepy for me. I think I prefer creepiness in books to be mitigated by some upbeat developments, as with The Hunger Games (which, it should be noted, bears more than a passing resemblance to Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery”).
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LibraryThing member eleanor_eader
This is compelling reading – the character of Merricat is persuasive, intriguing, as are the circumstances surrounding the decimation of her family. She’s amoral, wilful, yet bound by rules of her own devising. Her wild devotion to her sister Constance (so appropriately named) and her inept
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‘kindnesses’ to her Uncle Julian keep her endeared to the reader, even while she wishes vile death on intruders and starers and strangers. Her narrative weaves a magic spell around the Blackwood family home, drawing in the reader, until we join her in hoping that her strange barricades will hold.

When the women’s cousin, Charles, comes to stay, with one eye on Constance and the other on the safe in the study, Merricat’s odd reactions and devices mingle with increasing revelations about herself, her family and the ‘last day’. Among other carefully revealed, sinister titbits is that, for all his careful notes, Julian has disregarded his youngest niece from his recollections, claiming that she died of neglect in an orphanage during the trial.

This is a psychological drama, in the finest Gothic tradition; the relationships, the peculiarities, are all part of some formula that allows Shirley Jackson to build tension among mundane kitchen chores or seemingly benign oddity of character, giving the whole story a fraught quality that makes the reader keep turning pages even when she ought *cough* to be doing something else entirely. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The Haunting of Hill House, but only because I understood Eleanor better than I did Merricat.
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Rating

(2565 ratings; 4.1)

Call number

FIC G Jac
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