I had never heard of Shirley Jackson before, yes, Marlon James mentioned her (this is the last of the books I bought from James’ interview). But, evidently, many of us have read her, as the introduction claims that her short story, The Lottery, was at one point the most anthologized short story in the United States. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a short novel–probably properly a novella–from 1962.
This is one of the best written creepy, vaguely supernatural stories you’ll ever read … until the very end. Without giving much away, the setup is relatively clean: an aristocratic family lives on the outskirts of a town. The parents were poisoned under fairly suspicious circumstances, reducing the inhabitants of the “castle” to two young daughters and their paralyzed, addled uncle.
The daughters are the heroines of the story, and their relationship is amazingly sweet, even if it holds some very odd nooks and crannies. Their world is magical, in the best sense: meaning is held in everyday objects and in the natural world that surrounds the house, and it is all described with lyrically rich, highly evocative language.
On the other side, we have the villagers, a uniformly brutish and cruel lot who harass the daughters when they go into town, and who even delight at disasters that befall their family.
The story lost energy for me in its denouement, but the journey to get to that point is pretty fantastic: simultaneously heart-warming and deeply disturbed, sinister and sweet. Recommended.
{ It turns out (a) Haunting of Hill House, which I have not seen, was based on a Shirley Jackson story and (b) We Have Always Lived in the Castle is coming out as a film: here is the trailer. Knew neither of these things when I read the book. }
#WhatIWishICouldDo
There is a fluidity to Jackson’s writing that is astounding, an ability to ride the line between the fantastical and the mundane that continually surprises and engages the reader. It’s something attempt to emulate.