Book 25. We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson
Title: We have always lived in the castle
Author: Shirley Jackson
Genre: Fiction, book club
Pages: 214
Read before? No
Rating: 6.0 out of 10
Next book: Infinite possibilities: The art of living your dreams by Mike Dooley
Summary: Visitors call seldom at Blackwood House. Taking tea at the scene of a multiple poisoning, with a suspected murderess as one's host, is a perilous business. For a start, the talk tends to turn to arsenic. "It happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night," explains Uncle Julian, continually rehearsing the details of the fatal family meal. "My sister made these this morning," says Merricat, politely proffering a plate of rum cakes, fresh from the poisoner's kitchen. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. "What place would be better for us than this?" she asks, of the neat, secluded realm she shares with her uncle and with her beloved older sister, Constance. "Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people." Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, ritually revisiting them. She has made "a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us" against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers.
Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters' careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat's treasures, talking privately to Constance about "normal lives" and "boy friends." Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible secret, the convergence of the villagers upon the house, and a spectacular unleashing of collective spite
Why I am reading this. Bookclub.
My thoughts. Let met get my first complaint out of the way. I am in a science fiction/fantasy book club and this book was neither. It was straight fiction…ok I am done with that.
This was an odd book to get a handle on. It was such a short book and the characters were not really developed all that well. Constance and Mary (Merricat) were two maids that have little if any contact with the outside world as they tend to their Uncle Julian, whom was on deaths door. Combine that with the fact that the town remembers the details of the entire family that was poisoned and Constance was cleared. It was really sad to listen to how these people treated Mary when she would go to town to get food. It was not sad in an interesting way, as it seemed just too easy for the writer to make them that pathetic.
The interesting part was that they were crazy as hell. Constance never left the property and spent her entire time taking care of Julian. Because of this, she has zero personal skills and is very easily manipulated. Mary Katherine or Merricat (got I hate that name), is paranoid and superstitious. She doesn’t trust anyone and spends a lot of time trying to use charms to thwart those that oppose her family.
Cousin Charles comes to visit and Mary is sure he is up to something…which he is. But the way she goes about trying to fight him was a bit insane. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I doubt that belief in magic cannot be a powerful thing, but in this book, it seemed more like paranoid flights of fancy. She would do things like nail a book to a tree, or bury silver coins…trying to find a symbolic defense. I love magic, but she just seemed like a crazy person believing in something that was not true.
The writing was pretty pedestrian as well. The plot was not that interesting and for it being such a short book, I felt like it took me forever to read.
Best thing about book. How crazy they were.
Worst thing about book. Poorly written and just not that interesting.