Review by gwenswoons - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

gwenswoons 's review for:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

4.5

challenging dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

What the fuck, haha. This book is truly bananas and terrifying and I’m so eager and curious to read more by Shirley Jackson. It’s so dark and twisted and macabre and yet so funny, oddly tender in moments even as the tenderness is often 100% creepy. I’m amazed at Jackson’s ability to evoke both this sense of stillness AND this sense of dread and horror at once — truly masterful writing. There is such a deft and brutal hand here with the gender and class dynamics and, too, the dynamics between societal outcasts and people who are included in public society; Jackson makes all these jagged points — her characters make them for her — somehow without ever fully revealing what her exact point is at any given moment, and without giving us the comfort and clarity of knowing what she thinks herself of all she observes (and makes us observe) as readers. It’s so good, so unsettling and ferocious. It’s like if Stephen King actually knew what the fuck he was doing (on a sentence level) and had nuanced female characters.

Content Warnings