Book of the Month–July 2011
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
By: Shirley Jackson
New York: Viking Press, 1962
Sisters Consta
nce and Mary Katherine Blackwood live in a large house on a large estate with their wheelchair-bound uncle. They are isolated from the local community by money, social standing and suspicion stemming from the mysterious deaths of their paren'ts. Constance was accused of their murder and following her acquittal, she has not ventured from the house, seeing only selected visitors.
The story is narrated by 18-year-old Mary Katherine, known as Merricat. She is the family’s only contact with the villagers, travelling into town for supplies weekly. She is a prankster with a powerful belief in sympathetic magic. She perceives, through a magic charm, that danger is imminent shortly before the unexpected arrival of a long-absent cousin. Merricat believes he is a demon and will go to great lengths to protect her family.
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Awards and Acknowledgements:
1962: One of Time’s “Ten Best Novels of the Year”
Reviews:
About the Author
Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. During her high school years, her family relocated to New York State where she attended the University of Rochester and Syracuse University. During her time at Syracuse, she worked on the campus literary magazine where she met her future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman. After their marriage in 1940, they settled in Bennington, VT and produced 4 children.
Jackson’s most famous short story The Lottery was published in The New Yorker in 1948. Considered a classic of the gothic horror genre, it describes small town citizens who participate enthusiastically in a ritual sacrifice. The Lottery is said to be inspired by Jackson’s experiences in Bennington where she was saddened to discover anti-intellectualism and anti-Semitism. The New Yorker reported that the story prompted more mail than anything the magazine had published previously; the responses were often critical of the story’s cynical view of humanity. Jackson commented that readers “would write me letters I was downright scared to open”.
Although she is perhaps best remembered for her darker writing, Jackson also produced charming humorous memoirs about her family.
In her later years Jackson suffered from a variety of mental and physical ailments including agoraphobia, a condition shared by Constance Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. She died of heart failure when she was 48.
Read Alikes
If you like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, you may also enjoy:
Other Books by Shirley Jackson
The Bird’s Nest, 1954
The Haunting of Hill House, 1959
The Sundial, 1958
The Lottery and Other Stories, 2000
Come Along With Me, 1968
Just an Ordinary Day, 1997
Other Fiction
A Dangerous Road by Kris Nelscott
Don’t I Know You? by Karen Shepard
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor
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