Posted: November 2, 2022
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson's masterful writing captures a type of weirdness that lies just beneath the surface, a weirdness laced with horror.
As We Have Always Lived In the Castle begins it immersed me in the village walk of one Mary Katherine Blackwood. The ordeal - and it was an ordeal - reminded me of moments in my life when I felt rejected, ostracized and the object of derision of the people around me. So it was a very dark beginning.
As the book rambles on, we are made acquainted with the famous tragedy at the center of this book: the mass murder by poison of most of the Blackwood family. The main suspect in the murder, since it happened during dinner, was the family cook, Constance Blackwood. A trial was held and she was acquitted. She returned home to their vast estate to live with the other survivors, Julian Blackwood, an uncle who has been damaged by the poisoning, and Mary Katherine, who we've already met.
We get to spend some time with these surviving Blackwoods and I for one notice the strange, eccentric lifestyle they have adopted. Most of this is seen from the viewpoint of Mary Katherine, a viewpoint that is a bit skewed, and not - as I initially thought - because of her youth. But I go along and the strange soon becomes quite normal for me - until the arrival of Charles Blackwood.
It is Charles Blackwood and his opinions that provide the backdrop against which the weirdness of the lifestyle of the other Blackwoods really shows up.
The combination of Mary Katherine and Charles is a deadly one; a catastrophic one. At this point of the book not only does action suddenly erupt but some secrets concerning the Blackwood murders come to light. Up until this point I thought this was a so-so book but it suddenly became a good one.
After turning the last page and letting the book settle in my mind I came to the conclusion that this is not merely a good book, it is a great one.
This is a horror story with no supernatural element but it is horrific nonetheless. A book of psychological horror.
This is my second Shirley Jackson and her writing continues to be faultless - masterful, really. Shirley Jackson increasingly appears to me as a champion of rejects and outsiders, which is great.