Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (Spoiler-Free)

I began dressing Helen Clarke in my mind, putting her in a bathing suit on a snow bank, setting her high in the hard branches of a tree in a dress of flimsy pink ruffles that caught and pulled and tore; she was tangled in the tree and screaming and I almost laughed.

I've always felt connected to Shirley Jackson, and I'd like to think it extends beyond the fact that we both grew depressed at the University of Rochester.

I'm a huge fan of gothic horror, a huge fan of weird, and a huge fan of dangerous children. We Have Always Lived in the Castle checks all of those boxes.

Much like her other famous works, this novel relays relatively mundane events, but from an alluring perspective. You can't help but feel captivated by every word Mary Katherine—Merricat—utters, every thought she shamelessly recounts. The words are so ordinary, but their cadence so strange. You can't quite place what might be wrong... there's just something amiss. Because whatever it is, it's shifty. A pair of eyes behind a curtain. Or maybe just two candles.

There's so much to uncover in these pages, in the minds of Merricat and Constance. There are slices of the patriarchy, inklings of the "other", a trickle of existential terror, and perhaps a sprinkle of fun?

Reminiscent to me of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and somehow, some way, Mona Awad's Bunny, Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle has definitely earned a place on my praise list of weird fiction.