As I try to catch up on classics I never read, Shirley Jackson came to mind. Like many people, I read The Lottery in school and it stuck with me so that when I reread it, it was just as I remembered it almost fifty years ago. So when We have Always Lived in the Castle cropped up on list after list of books we all should read, it took little convincing. Now, Shirley Jackson haunts me again. Dammit. and YAY!
MaryCat might be 18, but she is treated throughout as a child, almost. She is a Blackwood and the family name is cursed forever in their small town, where they once were the rich people on the hill. Constance, her older sister is a lot older, maybe late 20s, and she has always been very domestic and stable to MaryCat’s torrential temperament. Uncle Julius, their father’s brother, is disabled and uses a wheelchair. He is ill and Constance takes care of him, while MaryCat always states her intention to be nicer to him.
Because, they are all that’s left of their family after their mother, father, brother and aunt, Julius’s wife, died at the dinner table years ago. For me, this novel is about trauma and mental illness with each of the three housemates response to the tragedy they survived. MaryCat, always in trouble as a child, has a deeply complex internal life full of rules, magic words, ways of staying safe by burying things. She relies on Constance to keep her this side of okay. Constance, acquitted of the murder but seen as guilty by the town, has hidden away for years, sending MaryCat out for what groceries they need. Julius spends his years writing the story of the night of the murders, questioning Constance about what she remembers because MaryCat was sent to her room without supper that night for bad behavior.
The townspeople generally taunt and revile them, but they have a few friends, too. They just cannot accept the friendship offered. When a stranger enters their midst, he totally upends things, with disastrous results and an ending that is bizarre and even more unsettling than the rest of the book. I love quirky characters and only Shirley Jackson could lure me into the stressful lives of the house and its inhabitants. Just an incredible piece. If you don’t appreciate it, you didn’t let yourself sink into the minds of these three. Oh! and Jonas the cat. Fabulous. The narration by Bernadette Dunne is phenomenal.
They Called me Bookworm 