Six years ago there were seven Blackwoods. Now there are only three; elder sister Constance, uncle Julian and eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat, as she's called by her sister. It's generally accepted that Constance poisoned the family by putting arsenic in the sugar bowl. But she was quickly acquitted. Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a delightfully macabre tale, quintessentially Gothic in its portrayal of an eccentric family ostracized by local villagers, reminiscent of those I encountered in Jackson's famous short story, The Lottery.
Merricat narrates the story, beginning with her weekly trip into the village for groceries and new library books. Constance is a bit of an agoraphobe, never leaving the house, and uncle Julian is confined to his wheelchair, so it falls on the younger sister to attend to all the errands. Merricat seems much younger than her years, but she copes as well as she can with the hostile villagers and taunting children who can't seem to forgive the family for their past misbehaviors. It doesn't take long to figure out that quirky Merricat is not the most reliable of narrators. But what an interesting character, strange as it may sound I have a soft spot for unreliable narrators. Her coping mechanisms consist of game playing, much like a children's game board, to get from one street to the next and avoid interaction with the locals until she is safely out of the village and on Blackwood property where she can lock the world out.
Merricat also has a habit of burying or hiding things, small talismans, to keep the family and house safe from intruders. When she discovers a book of her father once nailed to a tree now lying on the ground, it's as if the guard has been let down and they are all momentarily in peril. Before she can decide what trinket can replace the book to keep them safe, someone comes knocking on their door. Their carefully constructed world is about to come falling down around their shoulders.
Charles Blackwood, their cousin, has come to pay his respects. When his father was alive he was not allowed to communicate with this branch of the family, but as his father has passed away, he's wasted no time to call on his remaining family. Merricat doesn't trust his intentions as he worms his way into the household and questions all their firmly held beliefs on how to live. He sees poor uncle Julian as a demented old man, yet its through his ramblings that we slowly learn the details of the crime. And Merricat is simply unexplainable and troublesome to him. The tension mounts as he tries to lure Constance away from her solitary yet comfortable surroundings.
This is a wonderfully told story, and trust me, when you pick it up and start reading you won't want to put it down until you turn that last page. And as you read all your assumptions of the characters and their motivations will come into question. The ending was fairly neatly tied up, yet so many things were not at all explicit, leaving the reader to contemplate just why things happened as they did. This was Jackson's last novel, published in 1962, just a few years before her death. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I read that elements in the story were loosely based on Jackson's own agoraphobia and nervous conditions, and the sister's were based on her own two daughters. Was it just me, or did there also seem to be a subtle and subversive humor to the story as well? I think Jackson really is a master storyteller and I hope she is and continues to be widely read. I know I'll be reading more of her work.
This was my third R.I.P. Challenge read. I'm racking them up this month as three out of the last four books I've finished have been R.I.P. books. I may actually finish a challenge. I will mostly likely pick up Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady, though I am also contemplating the shorter The Murdered House by Pierre Magnan. Both look like wonderful reads.