we have always lived in the castle full text

All in all, good, creepy, expertly-crafted fun.Īlso, if you haven’t read “The Lottery”, you should! Because everyone else has, it’s good, it’s suspenseful and it’s super short.

It’s a classic gothic novel, and the haunting feel of the novel is enhanced by the almost-whimsical tone of our narrator, a girl who only trusts her older sister and is threatened when their circumstances begin to change.

It’s not for everyone, but Shirley Jackson is pretty masterful as far as crafting works of horror and suspense go (she also wrote The Haunting of Hill House, which the movie “The Haunting” is based upon). And of course, as the novel unfolds, so does the mystery of what happened to the rest of their family. And the text absolutely supports a good nature humor from the sisters towards their mad uncles meanderings. Ive always read Uncle Juliens obsession with the death of his own family as almost gleeful. The two sisters, Merricat and Constance, go about their days, but their lives seemed suspended in the shadows of events that happened many years ago. In the novel there is joy in the house before outsiders arrive for social tea or, in the case of Charles, to get at their hidden money. It’s unclear who is more fearful of whom - the girls or the townspeople. Here, two sisters live in a large mansion, estranged and distanced from the rest of the town, and caring for their elderly uncle. Her stories tend to be about dark, complicated people who do dark, complicated things. Shirley Jackson, who most people know from her short story “The Lottery” which almost everyone read in grade school at some point, has a particularly dark and suspenseful brand of writing and it shines in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Hmm, I seem to have read quite a few books about crazy people lately. By Jennifer Marie Lin on Dec 10th, 2014 (Last Updated Sep 19th, 2019)

We have always lived in the castle full text