We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson, 1962
Horror Mystery, thriller & crimeLiterary fictionContemporary fiction
A village hates two sisters, and inside their house a strict, loving order holds. Then a cousin arrives, and the order begins to crack.
Feels like dread and unease. About family, society and home.
A page from the book
A self-portrait in dislikes, lucky fingers, and one very flat sentence.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead. Shirley Jackson.Jackson wrote the novel in 1962 while ill and increasingly housebound in Bennington, Vermont, raising four children in a house her folklorist husband filled with books.
Books that feel like this
More by Shirley Jackson
Ζούσαμε πάντα σε ένα κάστρο
Shirley Jackson, 1962
A fiercely private young woman describes the house and family rituals that keep the outside world at bay—and make every ordinary detail feel ominous.
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Questions readers ask
- What is We Have Always Lived in the Castle like?
- Feels like dread and unease. About family, society and home.
- What should I read after We Have Always Lived in the Castle?
- If you liked We Have Always Lived in the Castle, try Dark Places (Gillian Flynn), Hidden Pictures (Jason Rekulak) and Cell (Stephen King).
A taste of the feed
Even in a suicide fantasy, someone still has to make the coffee.
It was miserable, wet-bone March and I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter. “Did she want to be buried or cremated?” people would ask. “Who should come to the funeral?” And no one would know. The people, whoever they were, would just look at each other’s shoes or shoulders until the silence settled in and then someone would put on a pot of coffee, briskly and with a fair amount of clatter. Coffee goes great with sudden death.
Dark Places · Gillian Flynn
The difference between knowing you're watched and proving it.
It’s very weird, standing still for five minutes, blindfolded, in a perfectly silent room, knowing that guys might be looking at your boobs or your butt or whatever. There were no sounds or clues to help me guess what was happening. But I definitely felt them watching. I raised and lowered my hand several times, and the five minutes seemed to last an hour. After we finished, Susan asked me to repeat the experiment, and we did it all over again. Then she asked me to repeat the experiment a third time! And when she finally pulled off the blindfold, all the guys stood up and started clapping, like I’d just won an Academy Award.
Hidden Pictures · Jason Rekulak
The speed with which ordinary life becomes archaeology.
Civilization slipped into its second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood, but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. It was as if it had been waiting to go. On October 1, God was in His heaven, the stock market stood at 10,140, and most of the planes were on time (except for those landing and taking off in Chicago, and that was to be expected). Two weeks later the skies belonged to the birds again and the stock market was a memory. By Halloween, every major city from New York to Moscow stank to the empty heavens and the world as it had been was a memory.
Cell · Stephen King
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