Reviews - Vi har alltid bott på slottet

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Vi har alltid bott på slottet

Shirley Jackson

3.94 AVERAGE

adventuresinwellbeing's review against another edition

3.75

dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

librarylady7's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

mercedes's review against another edition

4.5

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the most subtle horror I’ve read thus far. It is not scary, the individual aspects making up the plot of the novel hardly combine to make something horrifying. It is instead the intricate web of Shirley Jackson’s words and the feeling those words evoke that come together to make something deeply disturbing. From the very first page you are chilled.

While the characters of Merricat, Constance, and Uncle Julian are interesting, it was not so much the characters themselves that fascinated me but what they represent. A life controlled by magical thinking obsessive compulsion. If I bury these marbles here, and break this watch chain, and think of these three words, nothing bad will happen. A pre-Stepford suburbirific 1950s housewife dream-nightmare constancy, days filled with nothing but excessive cooking, cleaning, and caretaking. Agoraphobic to the extreme, no one needs to leave the house except for groceries, so I can make spice cookies and rum cakes and blackberries with sugar. The reliable housewife and mother, who can do everything except leave the house. And yet another life, controlled by obsession of a different kind. When the mind hones in on one subject and forgets all else. Just don’t touch my papers. I found cousin Charles to be the most horrific aspect of this novel, with his false asides to Jonas and (obsession runs in the family) preoccupation with money.

But I was chilled up until and beyond the tragic end, with Merricat and Constance completing their isolation, which extends inside their own house. Merricat’s safe distance outside grows shorter, just the kitchen and hallway remain of use. They spend their days observing people through holes in the barred up door. They are left gifts of food by penitent townspeople.

But do the acts of kindness penetrate deeper than the surface, or is there arsenic in the sugar?

The fear of being seen which overwhelms the novel particularly interests me, especially in the case of our two female characters. The observation by others of Merricat and Constance is always menacing. The consequence of being a woman and knowing, by virtue of it, that you will be watched. I find it interesting that the night I finished this book I had a nightmare that I was surrounded by people all making objectifying and deeply inappropriate comments about me, which I couldn’t fully escape. That dream led on to another in which I lived in an elaborate house (just begging for the National Trust stamp), going into gilded room after gilded room, searching for a feeling of safety and not finding it. I think this novel is indicative of a disturbing yet authentic version of women’s fear. Of fear in general. Of the things that control us, even as they fool us into believing we hold the power… if I just bury these marbles, nothing bad will happen.