Shirley Jackson | Book Chatter

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
By Shirley Jackson
Penguin Classics, October 2006, 160pp.

The Short of It:

An odd little read.

The Rest of It:

Two sisters, Merricat and Constance Blackwood live in an old, dilapidated house called The Castle. They live there with their disabled Uncle Julian. Disabled from a freak poisoning “accident” that killed their entire family.

This family is hated by the villagers in town. The Blackwoods are odd, unable to fit in and ostracized whenever they show up in town for supplies. Merricat, the youngest endures the bullying with a watchful eye. As nasty as the townspeople are, they’re also a little bit afraid. No one wants to be around a family that damned near killed everyone at dinner. Do they?

The house is surrounded by Merricat’s idea of protection. Buried items, idols of some sort posted on a fence, all to keep the townspeople away. It’s rather “witchy” in nature and will keep you guessing.

To shake things up, Cousin Charles makes an appearance. An unwelcome appearance. Merricat despises him. Julian, not all together there, also takes to disliking him; continuously calling him the wrong name and insisting that people are dead when they are clearly alive. This is when we learn of Constance’s insufferable nature.

She really needs a good slap across the face. Cousin Charles mows over her, tries to sell the house out from under her and she just smiles and goes about her day. It’s all too much. Clearly Charles is not there to support their lives in any way.

Then, tragedy strikes. Yes, more tragedy. Here, the story gets very weird. I questioned whether these characters were even alive or if they were actually dead, but refused to leave The Castle.

Here’s what’s true:

Jackson does an amazing job depicting the isolation of these characters.
She creates some really strange characters. Annoying ones with quite the air of mystery about them. You wanna know more.
The house is a main character. Falling in on itself, damaged later on, in disrepair yet still called home.
Jackson’s handling of the villain/s in this story piqued my interest.
There is no cut and dry way of interpreting this story.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a literary classic. It should be experienced but not everyone will love it. In fact, I think most won’t like it at all. It was adapted to the big screen. I am curious to see how they interpret the story. I am discussing this with a group and my interpretation is quite different.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

This year, there are only a few houses in my neighborhood that are decorated for Halloween. I didn’t go all out. I put up a flag, a wreath and some garden stakes. Enough for a kid to know that the house will have candy come Halloween night.

Everyone is blaming the economy but I just think it came on way too fast this year. Along with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are already lining the store shelves. I know because today I tried to buy a costume accessory for myself and there was hardly anything left but there was plenty of Christmas stuff.

My point? Oh yeah… there is one.

When the holidays roll around, do you find yourself reaching for holiday reads to get you into the mood? One of my favorite ghost stories is Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Here’s the blurb from Barnes and Noble:

“First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers-and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.”

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic and has been made into many movies. None of which, in my opinion, equal the book so if you saw the movie and thought, “what a load of hooey!”, then you were probably right in thinking that. In fact, I give you permission to think that.

I’ve read it many times and each time it gets creepier. If you have time this weekend, go to the library and check it out. It will definitely raise your Halloween spirits (no pun intended).

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