We’ve Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

RATING: GOOD BUT STRANGE

First Published: 1962

SPOILERS!!!

This is a short novel about two sisters who live in an isolated house in America. They also look after their sick uncle Julian. We discover that six years ago four members of their family, their parents, their brother and their aunt, died of arsenic poisoning. The arsenic was found in the sugar bowl, and Constance, the oldest sister, was accused but acquitted. Constance wasn’t poisoned because she doesn’t eat anything with sugar, and Constance had been sent to her room without dinner. And Julian was very sick but survived.

The book is quite strange in its narration. Mary Katherine, the youngest sister, is eighteen but she sounds as if she were twelve. When a cousin, Charles, turns up, things change because Mary Katherine doesn’t like him, and the cousin seems very keen on the money the sisters have. When Merricat (Mary Katherine) and Charles have a confrontation, she is fuming, and when she goes to her father’s room, which Charles was using, she sees his smoking pipe and tosses it in some papers. The house is on fire, and the fire brigade is called. The sisters and Charles manage to escape, but Julian dies of a heart attack. The way the sisters behave about the fire is very strange.

After the fire, the sisters start to live inside the house and cover all the windows. They use the food that for years their family and Constance canned. People come to talk to them and say they want to help, but the sisters remain hidden. We discover that the sister who poisoned the family was Merricat and not Constance. Then people start leaving foot on their doorstep, and the sisters manage to survive. Merricat says that they are living on the moon, and they agree that they are very happy.

It was an interesting read, beyond my comfort zone, but it wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read.