Sometimes, the TGBC crew give you just the kick in your pants you need to read something that’s been on your list for ages. For me, that was ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson, and it did not disappoint. Jackson’s final novel, published just three years before her death, is a brilliant piece of chilling, atmospheric horror. You see, 6 years ago the rest of the Blackwood family were murdered, poisoned with arsenic at the dinner table. Ever since then, the sisters Constance and Mary Katherine (Merricat) and the last member of the family, a frail uncle Julian, have survived in their enormous gothic mansion almost entirely alone. Their days are carefully ordered and Merricat keeps the rest of the world at bay using what seems to be witchcraft, burying her talismans of power and nailing things to trees. That is, until a money-grubbing relative rears his ugly head and sends Merricat’s carefully ordered world off its axis. 

Narrated entirely by Merricat, Jackson subtly layers psychosis, dependency, obsession and trauma into the central relationship between Merricat and her sister Constance. The terrible truth of what happened to the family ties them together tighter than the bonds of blood. Constance, an agoraphobic who never leaves the grounds, provides a solid object for the strange, mercurial Merricat to orbit around, ensuring that neither can ever leave the other. The village surrounding the house is seemingly populated by vile and cruel people who take delight in tormenting Merricat on her weekly errands, seemingly because of what happened to the family. (A common in theme in Jackson’s other books, who famously thought very little of small-town America.) This further contributes to the isolation of the Blackwoods, despite the best efforts of some neighbours. 

Jackson however gradually strips away the layers of delusion to reveal a far more sinister truth. The reader is on the one hand left with no doubt as to what happened to the family, that fateful day. But on the other, we are plagued by questions that the novel deliberately leaves unanswered, leaving it up to us to decide what is real and what is fiction. The final act is even more obtuse, casting a different light on the entire story and leaving us with what seems to be the origin of a ghost story, told by frightened children around fires late at night. 

Chilling, faceted and open-ended, this is a book that got better with discussion. Everybody had their own opinions on what happened, what the ending was about and really, isn’t that what a good book club book does?

-- Ben Archibald (Sutherland Chapter)  

The front cover of Shirley Jackson’s novel “We have always lived in the Castle” is a dark picture of a four-story house on a hill with one room lit at the top. My copy also includes quotes that use the words “Eerie”, and “suspense”, and a description on the back of a ‘deliciously dark and funny story’. So I strapped myself in for a ghost story.

And it began with a bang, albeit a weird one, that have led some to even claim it is “the best opening paragraph” of any novel in the modern era. A young woman, 18 year old Mary Katherine Blackwood, Merricat for short, describes how she lives in the large mansion, she doesn’t like washing, and thinks that “with any luck I could have been born a werewolf because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length”, which is perhaps what some goons may have wanted to give this book at the end. Merricat’s parents are also no longer there in the house. Or are they? 

She lives with her older sister Constance, and her wheelchair bound Uncle Julian. But even from the very first paragraph (whether it is the best or not), Merricat exhibits a level of coercive control over Constance, and Uncle Julian, and perhaps even the reader. The first chapter down and we are left with a lot of questions: What happened to her parents? Why is she the only one who goes to town twice a week? and When do we get to the ghosts?

Some of these get answered as the book unfolds. Some of them do not. We find out that Constance, was accused of murdering her parents and an aunt and uncle by poisoning. We find out that she was ultimately acquitted. We find out that for some reason there are now a lot of rules surrounding what Merricat is allowed to touch. And we find out that the sisters and Uncle Julian have always lived in the castle.

The background of Merricat and Constance is then ‘deliciously’ moved along, perhaps too slowly for some of the goons in my Chapter, but for others, this is one of the great attraction of the novel. Four deaths by poisoning? A range of different diagnoses of the main characters? Is there a psychopath or sociopath in the castle? Or just a couple of abandoned little girls with agoraphobia and PTSD?

If walls could talk, is the old cliché, but this idea forms one of the pivotal quotes of the whole book, when one character observes that “there is a certain anger in the house”. This is made worse by a massive fire in the castle, which is heroically put out by the townsfolk, only so they can they ransack and damage the house for themselves.

Some goons in our chapter continued the questions: What happened to cousin Charles who turned up somewhere in the middle looking for money and then leaves without a trace? What is the significance of Jonas, the black cat, throughout the novel? Was there a plot twist we missed? Where was the story line? What was the point of the long-winded descriptions going nowhere? And where were the ghosts? (ok that was just me)

And perhaps the best question of all: Who was the victim?

Have I just been coerced into finishing a pathetic story about a psychopathic 18-year-old who murdered 4 of her immediate family only sweetened by the sugar on the blackberries? Or is this a genius portrayal of emotional and psychological trauma faced by a young person in a small town full of isolation, persecution and ostracism?

My answer to both questions is Yes.

-- A. Charleston (Kensington Chapter)