Shirley Jackson

Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood and her elder sister Constance live alone in their ancestral home with their crippled uncle after the tragic murder of both of their parents, their aunt, and their younger brother. Having been accused and later acquitted of the murders, Constance confines herself to the grounds of their home, while Merricat contends with their hostile neighbors and with the ever-increasing sense of impending danger she feels is heading their way. In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, author Shirley Jackson deftly handles delicate subjects like mental illness, agoraphobia, and social isolation. We Have Always Lived in the Castle was Jackson’s final novel, and has been held in high critical esteem since its publication in 1962. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Merricat Blackwood is the only member of her family to leave the house. Her sister Constance won't and her uncle Julian, the sole survivor of a poisoning, can't. When Merricat ventures into town, the people are invariable hostile. The murders of her relatives have gone unpunished and the townspeople are quick to blame her. Merricat must do what she can to protect what's left of her family. A macabre masterpiece filled with suspense and tension, yet darkly humourous.

Erika Stonehouse

Without looking I could see the grinning and the gesturing; I wished they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies. 

Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret . . . The inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors. Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

Jing Yi

"Can't you make them stop?" I asked her that day. wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love. "Can't you make them stop?"

mara

I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.

I was thinking of Charles. I could turn him into a fly and drop him into a spider's web and watch him tangled and helpless and struggling, shut into the body of a dying buzzing fly; I could wish him dead until he died. I could fasten him to a tree and keep him there until he grew into the trunk and bark grew over his mouth. 

Neesha Balapitiya 

The people of the village here always hated us.

We rarely moved things; the Blackwoods were never much of a family for restlessness and stirring.

Sarah Christine Gill

All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us. 

Mary Catherine’s inner monologue is the best thing about this book. 

Jillian Roberts

I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping. I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.

Silje Løvli Lorentsen

I remembered that I had stood looking at our house with love yesterday, and I thought how it had always been so tall, reaching up into the trees. Today the house ended above the kitchen doorway in a nightmare of black and twisted wood; I saw part of a window frame still holding broken glass and I thought: that was my window; I looked out that window from my room.

I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes - the left - saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented. 

The day outside was full of changing light, and Jonas dannced in and out of shadows as he followed me. When I ran Jonas ran, and when I stopped and stood still he stopped and glanced at me and then went briskly off in another direction, as though: we were not acquainted, and then he sat down and waited for me to run again. We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved. Jonas disappeared into the grass, which was tall enough for me to touch with my hands while I walked, and he made small crooked movements of his own; for a minute the grass would all bend together under the breeze and then there would be a hurrying pattern across it where Jonas was running.

I told myself that long thin things would remind me to be kinder to Uncle Julian; this was to be a day of long thin things, since there had already been a hair in my toothbrush, and a fragment of a string was caught on the side of my chair and I could see a splinter broken off the back step. “Make him a little pudding," I said.

"Lazy Merricat," Constance said to me, "stop dreaming over your toast; I want you in the garden on this lovely day." She was arranging Uncle Julian's tray, putting his hot milk into a jug painted with yellow daisies, and trimming his toast so it would be tiny and hot and square; if anything looked large, or difficult to eat. Uncle Julian would leave it on the plate. 

On Saturday mornings I helped Constance. I was not allowed to handle knives, but when she worked in the garden I cared for her tools, keeping them bright and clean, and I carried great baskets of flowers, sometimes, or vegetables which Constance picked to make into food. The entire cellar of our house was  filled with food. All the Blackwood women had made food and had taken pride in adding to the great supply of food in our cellar. There were jars of jam made by great-grandmothers, with labels in thin pale writing, almost unreadable by now, and pickles made by great-aunts and vegetables put up by our grand-mother, and even our mother had left behind her six jars of apple jelly. Constance had worked all her life at adding to the food in the cellar, and her rows and rows of jars were easily the handsomest, and shone among the others. «You bury food the way I bury treasure," I told her sometimes, and she answered me once: "The food comes from the ground and can't be permitted to stay there and rot; something has to be done with it." All the Blackwood women had taken the food that came from the ground and preserved it, and the deeply colored rows of jellies and pickles and bottled vegetables and fruit, maroon and amber and dark rich green, stood side by side in our cellar and would stand there forever, a poem by the Blackwood women. 

Constance can put her hand upon a bewildering array of deadly substances without ever leaving home; she could feed you a sauce of poison hemlock, a member of the parsley family which produces immediate paralysis and death when eaten. She might have made a marmalade of the lovely thornapple or the baneberry, she might have tossed the salad with Holcus lanatus, called velvet grass, and rich in hydrocyanic acid. I have notes on all of these, madam. Deadly nightshade is a relative of the tomato; would we, any of us, have had the prescience to decline if Constance served it to us, spiced and made into pickle?

Our mother had always served tea to her friends from a low table at one side of the fireplace, so that was where Constance always set her table. She sat on the rose sofa with our mother's portrait looking down on her, and I sat in my small chair in the corner and watched. I was allowed to carry cups and saucers and pass sandwiches and cakes, but not to pour tea.

The path was dark, because once our father had given up any idea of putting his land to profitable use he had let the trees and bushes and small flowers grow as they chose, and except for for one great meadow and the gardens our land was heavily wooded, and no one knew its secret ways but me. When I went along the path, going easily now because I was home, I knew each step and every turn. Constance could put names to all the growing things, but I was content to know them by their way and place of growing, and their unfailing offers of refuge. 

"Can't you make them stop?" I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love.

It was a fine April morning when I came out of the library; the Sun was shining and the false glorious promises of spring were everywhere, showing oddly through the village grime. I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.

With an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates 'A marvellous elucidation of life . . . a story full of craft and full of mystery' The New York Times Book Review Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. And when Cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Merricat must do everything in her power to protect the remaining family. In her final novel, Shirley Jackson displays a mastery of suspense, family relationships and black comedy. 'A witch's brew of eerie power and startling novelty' The New York Times

Federica

Das ist mein erstes Shirley Jackson Buch, und ich bin begeistert. Wir begleiten die unzuverlässige Ich-Erzählerin Merricat, die in einem alten Anwesen mit ihrem Onkel und ihrer großen Schwester lebt, nachdem der Rest ihrer Familie getötet wurde.

Man erfährt bereits von der ersten Seite an, dass Merricat kein gewöhnliches Mädchen ist, und wir erfahren auch schnell, wer die Familie möglicherweise vergiftet haben könnte. Doch es geht nicht hauptsächlich um dieses Ereignis, sondern darum, wie sehr das Dorf die Familie hasst, und wie Marricat krampfhaft versucht, den Frieden im Haus zu bewahren.

Die Geschichte ist absurd, hat eine düstere Atmosphäre und die Geschehnisse spitzen sich im Laufe des Buches immer weiter zu, sodass man völlig irritiert und zugleich vollkommen eingenommen ist. Meiner Meinung nach behandelt das Buch die Themen „Anderssein“ und die Emanzipation von Frauen, denn die beiden Protagonistinnen entscheiden sich selbst, welches Leben sie führen möchten, und gehen ihren eigenen Weg, auch wenn dieser sich von allen anderen unterscheidet.

Zainab 

Das ist mein erstes Shirley Jackson Buch, und ich bin begeistert. Wir begleiten die unzuverlässige Ich-Erzählerin Merricat, die in einem alten Anwesen mit ihrem Onkel und ihrer großen Schwester lebt, nachdem der Rest ihrer Familie getötet wurde.

Man erfährt bereits von der ersten Seite an, dass Merricat kein gewöhnliches Mädchen ist, und wir erfahren auch schnell, wer die Familie möglicherweise vergiftet haben könnte. Doch es geht nicht hauptsächlich um dieses Ereignis, sondern darum, wie sehr das Dorf die Familie hasst, und wie Marricat krampfhaft versucht, den Frieden im Haus zu bewahren.

Die Geschichte ist absurd, hat eine düstere Atmosphäre und die Geschehnisse spitzen sich im Laufe des Buches immer weiter zu, sodass man völlig irritiert und zugleich vollkommen eingenommen ist. Meiner Meinung nach behandelt das Buch die Themen „Anderssein“ und die Emanzipation von Frauen, denn die beiden Protagonistinnen entscheiden sich selbst, welches Leben sie führen möchten, und gehen ihren eigenen Weg, auch wenn dieser sich von allen anderen unterscheidet.

Die perfekte Herbstlektüre 🤎

The inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors.

overall i liked this and thought it was interesting! could see the central twist from a ways away, but can’t tell if that’s just bc shirley jackson is the blueprint and everyone has just been copying her forever. still really fascinating w the depiction of a rly rich familial relationship, to the extent that these ppl understand each other better than anyone else ever could, and all they need is each other…! v fun and at times grotesque and at others entertaining. i feel like i need to read analyses abt this to fully grasp it bc i am a fool. 

lucia

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

what a strange little fairy tale about how a house becomes haunted, how people become ghosts. 

jackson's prose is stunning — there has never been a better opening paragraph i don't think — and i adored merricat as a pov character. i loved the use of food and meals thematically, from the inciting dinner and the poisons to constance's garden and the blackwood preserves to the villagers at the end. food as a weapon and food as heritage and food as penance. the way the blackwood house itself was presented was also favourite aspect: a house as both refuge and prison, and how the sisters treated it as if it were alive, functioning as a character as well as a setting. by the end, character and setting has been blurred together inseparably.

part of me wishes there had been some exploration of the blackwood family dynamics a little more within that house, a little more to understand merricat's troubled nature. really, i suppose i want a story about that dinner six years ago and exactly why it happened the way it did, but i suppose the mystery of it is part of what makes this novel so compelling. 

 for a while, then, about the atmosphere jackson conjured, about constance and merricat and their boarded-up, overgrown castle, and about sugar and arsenic.

rory

what a strange little fairy tale about how a house becomes haunted, how people become ghosts. 

jackson's prose is stunning — there has never been a better opening paragraph i don't think — and i adored merricat as a pov character. i loved the use of food and meals thematically, from the inciting dinner and the poisons to constance's garden and the blackwood preserves to the villagers at the end. food as a weapon and food as heritage and food as penance. the way the blackwood house itself was presented was also favourite aspect: a house as both refuge and prison, and how the sisters treated it as if it were alive, functioning as a character as well as a setting. by the end, character and setting has been blurred together inseparably.

part of me wishes there had been some exploration of the blackwood family dynamics a little more within that house, a little more to understand merricat's troubled nature. really, i suppose i want a story about that dinner six years ago and exactly why it happened the way it did, but i suppose the mystery of it is part of what makes this novel so compelling. 

i'll be thinking about we have always lived in the castle for a while, then, about the atmosphere jackson conjured, about constance and merricat and their boarded-up, overgrown castle, and about sugar and arsenic.

This book felt more like a creative writing exercise. The sisters are immature, irritating, and prone to repetition. Significant attention is given to mundane details leading the reader to believe there is deeper meaning or foreshadowing a crucial development (which never happens). The sole revelation within the book can be guessed in the first chapter

I just finished reading it and I'm still crying. It's such a deep book, sad at times, and I think that it should be read at least once in your lifetime.

Morg

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret, with an afterword by Jonathan Lethem. A Penguin Vitae Edition Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods--until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiousity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp. Penguin Classics presents Penguin Vitae, loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life," a deluxe hardcover series featuring a dynamic landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction that has shaped the course of our readers' lives. Penguin Vitae invites readers to find themselves in a diverse world of storytellers, with beautifully designed classic editions of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

I cannot describe it, I dreaded the moments when I read it, because I was so scared that something happened to them, but I also couldn't put it down, it's just so captivating. 

Almost like a witchy fairtytale about sisterhood.

Valentina

I cannot describe it, I dreaded the moments when I read it, because I was so scared that something happened to them, but I also couldn't put it down, it's just so captivating. 

Almost like a witchy fairtytale about sisterhood.

Lili

yaya

Both one of the best I've read and one of my favourites. Unbelievable 

Hogne 

Almost like a fairy tale—playful and curious, yet dark and offbeat with a deep, underlying sadness—but far richer. There is so much that can and has been read into this, so many strands to pick and pull, so many angles to approach this from. 

Jackson’s prose is so lively and wonderfully eerie in its first-person narration. Feels timeless in the best of ways. Makes me thrilled to explore more of her novels, and even more so to revisit this one many times to come. 

Michael Klepacki

Almost like a fairy tale—playful and curious, yet dark and offbeat with a deep, underlying sadness—but far richer. There is so much that can and has been read into this, so many strands to pick and pull, so many angles to approach this from. 

Jackson’s prose is so lively and wonderfully eerie in its first-person narration. Feels timeless in the best of ways. Makes me thrilled to explore more of her novels, and even more so to revisit this one many times to come. 

Positively disturbing but I couldn’t put it down. Reading it made me feel weird for the rest of the day.

Kell Pitt

These girls just wanted to live their lives! But people are greedy and require too much 

Florence

This book had a classic eerie vibe to it. I enjoyed the story concept immensely, the spooky town, the strangeness of the Blackwood sisters and the eerie mystery surrounding their house all came together to create almost a perpetual sense of dread. This was my first Shirley Jackson book so I was unfamiliar with her prose until now but I quite liked it. 

The plot progression was good, I really couldn't predict anything, other than cousin Charles was going to be a piece of shit but I suppose that's to do with the author's great sense ability to create foreshadowing. The main twist didn't surprise me either but again I believe it's due to the way the author dropped hints and foreshadowed it, more than it being predictable. I will say after the main events of the book I thought the ending was going to be quite different. I was a little bit disappointed in how mellow it was, hence my rating isn't that high. 

In terms of characters, they were incredibly peculiar but in the case of this book, it's what you would want. I think Merricat being the central character is the most well-fleshed out but Constance and Uncle Julian were intriguing too. Merricat is kind of a masterclass in spooky little girls, all her little rituals were fun to read about. Some of them were quite wholesome to me. I wish we got a better understanding of the villagers I wanted to understand their hatred so bad! 

I think this is a book I would appreciate more if I re-visited it after I some more research and perhaps reading more of Shirley Jackson's works. I'm certain there is some nuances I missed out on in my first read. 

All in all, this is a fun spooky little book. 

Marz 

This book had a classic eerie vibe to it. I enjoyed the story concept immensely, the spooky town, the strangeness of the Blackwood sisters and the eerie mystery surrounding their house all came together to create almost a perpetual sense of dread. This was my first Shirley Jackson book so I was unfamiliar with her prose until now but I quite liked it. 

The plot progression was good, I really couldn't predict anything, other than cousin Charles was going to be a piece of shit but I suppose that's to do with the author's great sense ability to create foreshadowing. The main twist didn't surprise me either but again I believe it's due to the way the author dropped hints and foreshadowed it, more than it being predictable. I will say after the main events of the book I thought the ending was going to be quite different. I was a little bit disappointed in how mellow it was, hence my rating isn't that high. 

In terms of characters, they were incredibly peculiar but in the case of this book, it's what you would want. I think Merricat being the central character is the most well-fleshed out but Constance and Uncle Julian were intriguing too. Merricat is kind of a masterclass in spooky little girls, all her little rituals were fun to read about. Some of them were quite wholesome to me. I wish we got a better understanding of the villagers I wanted to understand their hatred so bad! 

I think this is a book I would appreciate more if I re-visited it after I some more research and perhaps reading more of Shirley Jackson's works. I'm certain there is some nuances I missed out on in my first read. 

All in all, this is a fun spooky little book. 

in terms of prose, this book is excellent. i’m a big fan of gothic/horror novels and what i love about them the most is the explanation of how things got to where they are, whether magical, literal or unexplainable. my issue with this book is that there was almost none of that. merricat is clearly troubled, but why? family dynamics were essentially glazed over, which is where i expected to find the explanation as to merricat’s decision to poison her entire family. the most sense that i got from the novel was at the suggestion that merricat was herself a ghost haunting the house, though that was quickly abandoned. the themes were excellent and the plot was … there. not a bad novel, per say, but it felt like more of literary exercise - albeit a great one.

Nina

mayfly

I haven’t been transported, figuratively, in such a vividly eerie atmosphere from other works I’ve read before. I am amazed by Jackson’s prose and how she weaves the story into this chilling account of isolation and anger.

merricat the master manipulator will make sure she and constance will live happily ever after!! not what i expected from the title and i did get kinda bored with all the descriptions of domestic activities that encapsulate their world 

After only reading some of her short stories, I made the very wise decision (if I do say so, myself) of trying one of her novels. This was excellent, to say the least. I highly recommend.  There are two wolves inside us: one who doesn't like leaving the house and seeing people, and another who knows they must leave the house and cope with seeing people by wishing those same people would drop dead. 

Kiersten

arwen

was half asleep when i read this so i have no idea what happened between the beginning and the end tbh

horror books about a house that is both a refuge and a prison with a big focus on trauma and alienation and fixation on the past and codependency and themes of decay and-

Caroline

CONFUSED!
 Is what I'm after finishing this novel. This Novel does showcase some excellent writing and story telling skills by the author.

Chapter 1needed my utmost attention and I had to slow down my reading pace to understand all those directions and the story because there was a lot going on. From the chapter 2,the story began to flow more easily and was able to pick up some pace with my reading, by  chapter 5,  I was enjoying the story with the entry of cousin Charles and Merricat's attempts to frighten him with all that poison talk. By  Chapter 7,  I was back to the blurb in search of some missing element, like a plot or some kind of purpose or meaning to this story but failed to find any and by  chapter 9,  this book began to wear me out in terms of reading, I had to put it down and pick it back up a couple of times. This is how I actually felt at each of these stages throughout this book.

Though I enjoyed the writing and the narration from Merricat's POV but as far as the story goes, this book just didn't make sense to me. There was no plot or purpose as to why the characters behaved it a particular manner, were they dead or alive, I had no clue. It was absolutely not a horror story and was very childish. And the ending just went on in circles and the chapters grew longer and tiresome to get through. The book just left me with a lot of unanswered questions.

I personally wouldn't recommend this book unless you are looking for a good piece of writing.

Demon

it was an interesting book.
I really enjoyed reading it, and I found the writing style readable. 
<spoiler>I still can't figure out why Mary Katherine put arsenic in the sugar and it makes me wonder if I didn't understand something in the book</spoiler>I loved how the author played with the gothic genre and how she managed to let us enter Mary Katherine's mind and I truly appreciated how well-depicted the villagers were
A book you need to read!

Sarah Sammis

At the heart of the novel is a mystery. Mary Katherine (Merricat), Constance, and their uncle are the sole survivors of a tragic poisoning. With Merricat as the unreliable narrator we're given pieces of their past to put together. By the end we'll know when it happened and how it happened. We'll also know a good deal of the troubling history of the Blackwood family and its toll on the house.

Besides Merricat's first person narration, we also have Uncle Julian's attempts to write his lengthy memoir about the family and the day of the murder. His obsession with the past serves as an example of what previous Blackwoods must have been like. The root cellar full of preserves well past their shelf date is another example. Finally there is Merricat's observation that every new Blackwood had to find a place for their things without disturbing the places of everything else. Once in, nothing leaves unless it is broken beyond repair, and sometimes not even then.

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maitha mana

Lindy

I wish I had read this in conjunction with Wide Sargasso Sea

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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