We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By: Shirley Jackson

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Shirley Jackson’s deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family takes readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, macabre humor, and gothic atmosphere.

Six years after four family members died suspiciously of arsenic poisoning, the three remaining Blackwoods—elder, agoraphobic sister Constance; wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian; and eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat—live together in pleasant isolation. Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic to guard the estate against intrusions from hostile villagers. But one day a stranger arrives—cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune—and manages to penetrate into their carefully shielded lives. Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods, resulting in crisis, tragedy, and the revelation of a terrible secret.

Jackson’s novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more—like some of her other fictions—as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normalcy itself.

©1962 Shirley Jackson (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The narration changed my interpretation

I first read this book as a kid and at the time identified with the teenage Mary Katherine, without questioning her as an "unreliable narrator." When I got the audiobook all these years later, I thought it would be fun to revisit a story I had liked. I was surprised at how Bernadette Dunne voiced the narrator character. She has a kind of tremor of fear in her voice right from the start. This isn't the quirky imaginative heroine who faces down the hateful townfolk and her encroaching cousin that I remember: this is a phobic young woman who tries to use to ritual to try to control her world, who is disturbed and disturbing!

After listening to this recording, I found myself questioning my earlier interpretation of the whole story. Though Mary Katherine calls her cousin Charles a ghost, this one isn't a ghost story. Though Mary Katherine believes in magic, and tries to create magic protection for herself, this one isn't a supernatural story. Still, the further the story goes, the further it is from reality. The ending is what I remembered, but I don't remember finding it so strange and unbelievable. This is a good thing, to me. There is so much more to think about and wonder about after hearing the recording.

Eloquently disturbing

Completely defies definition. Not really a thriller, mystery or horror story. No violence or gore, nothing overtly supernatural, and yet from the very beginning you feel unsettled, disturbed. You know something is just wrong, but have no choice but to take the grand tour of the Blackwood’s home and life with Merricat as your tour guide. No other perspective is provided, and as the tour progresses you kind of want to escape, but remain mesmerized in spite of yourself (like one guest who comes to tea uninvited). The family fears the outside world, the villagers fear the family, and the reader watches transfixed as inevitable forces ignite those fears into horrible actions/reactions. Humans really are the scariest of all creatures. Perfectly read by Bernadette Dunne.

Brilliant and creepy tale of agoraphobic sisters

Some people might not "get" this book, but if it works for you, you are in for a treat. Shirley Jackson is a brilliant writer, and this is her at her best. It is not a horror novel like The Haunting of Hill House, but it's still very unsettling. It is about a family who live a secluded life. The protagonist is creepy, but also very sympathetic, so as the reader you root for her even as she does weird things, like doing things she considers to be magic spells (e.g., nailing things to trees), and trying to avoid society. She is a great example of an unreliable narrator, and seeing the story through her eyes makes it much more affecting and surreal.

The narration is fantastic. Dunne's tone evokes the antisocial fear and strangeness that the text should have.

Absolutely marvelous -- creepy as all-get-out

This is really a classic -- not only the fine Shirley Jackson book, but the narration turns it into a work of art, creepy and intense. Even if you've read the story, this is a new experience. It gave me a new appreciation for Shirley Jackson, too, although this is one of those books where the audio version is really preferable to the printed version. If you like classic horror, don't miss this one.

A savory bit of creepilicousness

Mary Katherine ("Merricat") and Constance Blackwood live with their wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian in their once-grand family home. The wealthy Blackwoods have always been ostracized by the local townspeople, but when almost the entire Blackwood clan is wiped out by arsenic poisoning, the survivors become outcasts, hated and shunned. Constance was tried for the crime but acquitted; now she hides in her home, unable to face the accusing eyes and jeers of the outside world.

The story is narrated from the viewpoint of Mary Katherine, whose life is full of strange rituals and talking to her cat, Jonas. She is fascinated with poisonous herbs, she fantasizes about living on the moon, and she wants most of all to live with her sister Constance and never see anyone else. She creates magic words, buries things in the yard, and uses other spell-like rituals to "protect" the house and her sister, and since Merricat is the one telling the story, it's not clear whether she's really crazy or not.

The story unfolds slowly until you have a pretty good idea of what really happened before it is revealed, but the brooding, sinister tone of this short novel is creepy and dark and gothic, and by the end, it's not clear who the real villains are: the person who murdered an entire family, the greedy cousin who shows up looking for the supposed fortune hidden in the house, or the envious, grudging, small-minded villagers who feign concern and hospitality while mocking the Blackwood girls behind their backs.

Not t your typical horror story; all the deaths have already happened before the book begins, and if you are looking for elements of the supernatural, you will have to look hard. This is what you might call an American psychological thriller, where the horror is what is very subtly revealed about Merricat and Constance and the Blackwood family, and the nature of ordinary people in ordinary small towns.

Gripping Gothic Experience

Dunne's performance of this dark, insinuating book is excellent. The voice of the first-person narrator really gets inside of your head and it is hard to shake her when you take off the head phones. The book explores a lot of Jackson's obsessions, her belief in the reality of magic and witchcraft, and seems built upon her later-in-life fear of people outside her small circle and related agoraphobia.

beyond creepy...

“Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

This is an amazing book. I didn't realize going in that Shirley Jackson had written the famous/crazy/haunting short story The Lottery.

I think it is hard for books to capture the pressures of society and its norms on the individual. There is a bit of hysteria that goes on in the mind regarding the world outside of ourselves, that many novels glide right over as they head straight to the action. We Have Always Lived in the Castle captures the inner workings of an unhealthy family in such a true way it is difficult to read. Nothing much happens here, yet everything is laced in fear and suspicion.

The only other books I've discovered which are able to capture the overbearing role a person's mind and thoughts play in their life are older ones, like Poe, or the more recent American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman. It takes a truly incredible author to chronicle little external action, and still create a gripping read.

My only regret here was listening to the Audible version rather than getting the hard copy with the intro from Jonathan Lethem. The audiobook didn't include his introduction, and the narrator really overplayed a story that could have stood on its own without the theatrics.

You have to read between the lines

Weird but atmospheric tale of of two sisters, Merricat and Constance who live in agoraphobic isolation in a large old house with their senile old wheelchair bound uncle Julian. All of the rest of their family is long dead. Poisoned with arsenic six years ago. Constance stood trial for the deaths but was acquitted. Still the towns folk taunt and bully them. Thinking Constance killed her family with poisoned food. So the sisters stay at home. With money in a safe instead of a bank.

Eighteen year old Merricat is the only one who ever leaves the house, going out twice a week for food. Dodging the stares and condemnation of the towns folk. Merricat, the narrator of the story lives in a fantasy life. Wishing to be on the moon when people get to close to her. When ever they make fun of her she retreats into her fantasy world.

Her older sister Constance watches over every one constantly cooking, cleaning, gardening and baking and making tea. The entire story is a conversation in Merricat's warped brain. Child like fantasy life of an 18 year old. The unreliable narrator. The best parts of the book are what is not said but implied. Is Constance afraid to leave the house or is there something else going on? This is where Jackson's writing excels. But you have to have the patience to worm out the the unsaid from the silly babbling of girl who refuses to grown up. The implied but not spoken. Mericat buries objects in the garden. She has adventures in her head. Plays and talks to her cat. She secretly wishes people dead or disappeared. She places talisman all over their garden to ward off evil. Then one day a book she nailed to a tree falls and she thinks it is a bad omen. Something bad will happen. And it does.

Excellent writing but such a depressing story of cruelty, manipulation and mental illness. Not at all a horror story but very atmospheric. Leaving more mystery behind. This story is haunting without being a horror story.

Maybe it's me...

Any additional comments?

I must have missed it. Good performance, but I got more frustrated with the story as it went along. I enjoyed the writing style, especially a few particular scene narratives, but I was left with a "why did I do that? feeling". Not scary, just kind of weird.

Our house was a castle, turreted & open to the sky

Our house was a castle, turreted and open to the sky.
- Shirley Jackson, We have Always Lived in the Castle.

This is my second Shirley Jackson in two days. I'm running full-speed into Halloween I guess. This year, as I mentioned in my previous review, I wanted to read something literary, but scary. Lucky for me, Penguin's Deluxe Classics set has two nice editions of Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle and 'The Haunting of Hill House".

Having now read both, I'm not sure which I like the most. This one, probably. It is just a crazy, hot mess. It leaves you, even in the end, wondering who in the story is crazier (more unsettled)? Jonathan Lethem, in his introduction, made a good point, that Jackson's writing, at its core "conveys a vast intimacy with everyday evil, with the pathological undertones of prosaic human configurations: a village, a family, a self. She disinterred the wickedness in normality, cataloguing the ways conformity and repression tip into psychosis, persecution, and paranoia, into cruielty and its masochistitic, injury-cherishing twin."

Perfectly stated. That's why Lethem makes the big bucks. Jackson gets the big bucks because like David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, and Patricia Highsmith, Jackson has the pulse on suburban American wickedness. As I was reading this story, it made me think of the tribal and vicious nature of my Arizona neighbors and friends when presented with something different, odd, and perhaps a bit scary. But not just in my home town. It could be in Montgomery, Pittsburg, Charlottesville. We are living NOW in an era when it doesn't take much for your neighbor to grab a torch, a pitchfork, and come after YOU.

An oppressive dream - or is it real?

Why do the villagers hate the Blackwoods? Why does Constance never go out? Why was the sugarbowl washed out? This is a story full of mystery and you can never be sure what is real or imagined. Is Merrycat alive? How old are the sisters? What is Charles really up to?
I will need to read this again just to try and get a handle on the story but I suspect I will just encounter more mystery.
This is a stunning piece of American Gothic and has been perfectly narrated by Bernadette Dunne.
This is for lovers of magical writing that gives us more questions than answers and takes you into a world you will not forget.

Dreadful- in a good way

So well done listening to it made me feel close to a panic attack. A brillantly realised portrait of a paranoid state.

Strange but utterly mesmerising

What a wonderful and intriguing read this is. So dark and from the full throated American Gothic tradition, this is spooky and puzzling in equal measure. It's a bit like seeing the world from Boo Radley's PoV, if he were a strange little girl. You're never sure what's real and what isn't, and the imagery within is both domestic yet utterly surreal. Love it.

Unusual story and writing style, captivating.

Not terror, not a thriller, not a whodunit, but a tale about isolation and herd culture with elements from all of those genres. Shirley Jackson’s surprisingly beautiful prose really brings the feeling of being out of touch with reality to the reader.

I understand it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’d recommend giving it a try for the originality of the plot and the rich, multi-layered characters and scenes. The reader does an outstanding job of voicing Merricat’s alienated view of the world.

A lot of potential but no real pay off.

I had high expectations for this book but by the end I was a little dissapointed. The story didn't seem to go anywhere and I felt a lot was left unanswered in a sense of 'why' certain characters did certain things. I thought it was a great first person narative exploring the weird thoughts of the protagonist and I would have loved more of this. I still enjoyed the book overall though. It's maybe one for me to revisit as the concept is pretty cool.

Simply superb

Excellent in all areas. Slightly mad bonkers moving and sad
A story of love protection and forgiveness

Amazing title, shame about the story

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

If it had lived up to the title. I mean, it didn't have to be literally set in a castle. I get that titles can be metaphoric, or designed to capture a vibe or whatever. A brilliant example of this is "Let the Right One In".

What was most disappointing about Shirley Jackson’s story?

The story was about unlikeable people talking drivel and doing stupid things.

I came to Shirley Jackson through the film version of The Haunting of Hill House (the proper film, not the stupid remake). It blew me away, but it was years before I could find a copy of the novel, so my impression of it was probably a bit biased.

Anyway, I was expecting Castle to be a bit sinister and creepy, with an explicit supernatural element - rather than the tedious "was it all in her own mind?" thing. Instead it was just endless descriptions of what they were growing in the garden, what they're cooking, and what the silly little girl thinks it's like on the Moon.

Oh, and there was some stuff about poisoning that completely failed to engage my interest.

Have you listened to any of Bernadette Dunne’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No. I actually have Hill House on my MP3 player - I bought it thinking I might like to revisit it in unabridged audio form - but haven't played it yet.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. And, oddly, I found my love for Hill House lessened. I've heard of this happening before - a lot of people found their love for the original Matrix film diminished by the time they got to the end of the trilogy.

Any additional comments?

It would be nice if we could re-review books. I might try this again in a year or two and find my opinion completely changed.

Irritating - emporer's clothes?

It's going to be hard not to plot spoil - but without giving you the detail - you constantly get the feeling that there are some big '6th Sense' twists in here that will appear towards the end - well I'm afraid there aren't - it's just a ridiculous, irritating story that doesn't add up.

Spine chilling

There is an air of menace underlying the whole tale. It is beautifully narrated. The characters in all their strangeness are drawn sympathetically and it is the town with its close mindedness and cruelty which is evil bigoted and cruel.

A bit disappointing

I’m sure I’m missing the point here but I kept waiting for something to happen, some big revelation or jump scare…I understand the interesting premise of not knowing what is real, when all this is happening etc, but for me it just didn’t fulfil its promise of being properly menacing or sad. It felt like a slightly flimsy short story. But the narration was fantastic.