A review by suchsweetsorrow89
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

the more i think about this book, the more fond of it i am becoming. this tale, one that is part ambiguous, part philosophical, part fantasy, but ultimately entrenched within the evils and dangers that exist in our present reality come together to make a story that keeps to interested, makes you laugh at some points, but leaves you thinking of so much. while it was a bit slow for me in the beginning to imagine where we were, i think that was partly the point. this text is jarringly modern, breaks the typical ideas of what horror can and should look like in a literary space, and makes itself a quick favorite for me in my informal "summer of horror" journey. it's honestly shocking that this book is not more spoken about than it is, and i highly recommend it for anyone, yes, but especially those fond of unreliable narrators, The Stranger by Camus, The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, and skeptics of those who preach that the world we live in and the problems we face is "the best of all possible worlds" (thinking of Voltaire v Leibniz here). 
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