We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read We Have Always Lived in the Castle yet!

I've never read a writer capable of crafting such genuinely engrossing mentally unstable characters as Shirley Jackson. I found myself enthralled by Mary Katherine Blackwood, who is a human being so different from myself that she's interesting just for that, without even considering how real and intriguing the character is beyond such differences. It took a few pages for me to get used to her quirks but she was so skillfully crafted that I felt I had come to know her very well by the end of the story.

The conflict which takes place in the story felt a bit manufactured, but it was entertaining nonetheless and I also enjoyed the blunt scumbagitude of Charles Blackwood. For the majority of the story, it feels as though we're observing the Blackwoods far after the climactic, world-shifting event has already occurred. It makes for a bit of a lull in the story's first half as we get to know how dysfunctional and broken daily life has become for this family, but I suppose this period is necessary to fully come to terms with the odd situation we found our protagonist in, in addition to warming to her mental instability, which often presents itself as quirky and cute with a dark streak that bursts forth often out of nowhere and without warning.

By the end of the story I realized that my previous notion of this story occurring after-the-fact might not have be completely accurate. We're past the climax of the grander story, sure. But following the conclusion of this one I began to grasp how the seed of this story grew in Jackson's mind. Not as an aftermath, but as a prelude—We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a story about how the crazy ladies who live in the burned out, overgrown house came to be. You can see the Blackwood house growing into the house of legend that children are afraid of, and the Blackwood sisters themselves being the scary old ladies who steal children and cook them and eat them. And the way the story comes together to form this in its closing pages is absolutely brilliant. It was a subtle 'Aha!' moment that I was allowed to form in my own mind rather than having it foisted on me with a clumsy, contrived plot twist.

Jackson touches on some interesting questions regarding guilt and conscience, too. How it affects people, or doesn't affect them. But the mark those questions have left on me is still fresh and they're something I'll need to consider further as I put some more time between me and finishing this excellent book.

This is a brilliant piece of fiction. Probably more solidly constructed and more polished than The Haunting of Hill House. It's beautifully written and Mary Katherine is one of the most memorable characters I've read. It's subtly off-putting, more than a bit creepy, and it took me completely out of my comfort zone. It posed some questions to me that I haven't considered before and it presented me with a human character populated by thoughts and motivations completely foreign to my own, and I can't possibly ask more from reading a work of fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Lottery (1948) by Shirley Jackson

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read The Lottery yet!

Mom: Hi Jon! How are things?
Me: Great! Just picked up Shirley Jackson's short stories collection. Looking forward to reading some of them pretty soon. I think I'm going to start with The Lottery.
Mom: Oh, is that the one where they stone the woman to death?

Thanks Mom.

It's hard for me to review this because it was so expertly spoiled for me, and I always have a hard time reading something and giving it an honest shot when I already know the reveal, especially when the reveal is the most impactful part of the story, as it is with The Lottery.

Jackson's strength has always been maintaining an air of normalcy and serving up the weirdness with a slow-drip, as if you're the frog who doesn't notice the water temperature is slowly rising until you're speeding headfirst into a tree to end the novel with your own suicide boiling. The Lottery is similar in this regard, as there are subtle hints that something's off ("wait, why are these boys collecting rocks?") while remaining otherwise focused on the dry minutiae of daily village life.

Jackson's pacing of the story is its strength. She maintains a perfect grasp of just how much normalcy to feed the reader before dropping the bomb, and the story ends at the perfect location as well, leaving the juicy violence to the reader's imagination rather than indulging us all and describing it in detail.

My only wish is that there was more depth, but what's absent becomes the real meat of the story. Why is this tradition in place? Why haven't the people seen fit to do away with it yet, as other villages have? Jackson's depiction of tradition as being a weight around the ankle of a drowning man is nothing new now, but was core to the feeling of the time in which she was writing and provides ample chewing material beyond this short story's runtime.

A neat little story that captures what Shirley Jackson does best.

⭐⭐⭐

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson

Breezily paced and written in concise, direct prose, Hill House establishes many of the haunted house genre's mainstay cliches and tropes that are still replicated today. Jackson keeps the plot moving forward without riddling it with bombastic events. Instead, she feeds us bits of suggestive events, mostly through the narrator's unreliable account and inner thoughts. I grew not to be outright "scared", but had my foundation shaken by something continuously just... Off. It's like sitting in a silent room in the dead of Summer and swearing you can hear a mosquito buzzing around somewhere, but you can't find out where, and you've heard the damn buzzing on-and-off for so long and seen no mosquito that now you're no longer sure it isn't just your imagination.

Eleanor's actions are just out of place enough to tell you that something is seriously wrong with her; she laughs at the wrong times, her judgments of other characters are so inaccurate they make you wonder if you missed something. Later on, she begins to waffle in her feelings between her companions, often veering wildly from cold fury into outright obsession in the very next chapter.

It's a chilling read mostly due to Jackson's deft depiction of mental illness rather than any ghostly paranormal activity, which is mostly left up to the reader's interpretations. There are a few select shared experiences between multiple characters, but the majority of the disturbances in the house are felt by Eleanor, and Eleanor alone, leaving us to question: Is this really happening to her, or is it all in her head?

This may end up disappointing those expecting more of a pulpy horror read. But if you have an appreciation for subtle, character-driven narrative with a perfect ending, then I highly recommend this.

Bonus points for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition I had, with the ethereal, elegiac artwork of Eleanor on the cover continuously serving to creep me out when I put this down each night to go to bed. This book reads like this cover looks; simple, pretty, but also subtly off-putting. And you're often not quite sure why.

⭐⭐⭐⭐