Genre: Classic
Length: 146 pages
Audiobook Length: 5 hours and 32 minutes
First Published: 1962
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Rachael’s Review
Six years ago, the entire Blackwood family was poisoned by arsenic in their sugar. Even though Constance, who prepared the meal, was acquitted, the villagers shun her and the family. Now Constance hides away with her uncle, disabled from the arsenic, and her younger sister Merricat. When an estranged cousin arrives, he upsets the balance between the sisters and threatens to bring to light hidden secrets.
If you want a trippy Gothic classic, you cannot pass on Shirley Jackson’s short novel. Merricat is the perfect unreliable narrator, an odd childlike woman whom Constance coddles. Is Merricat’s mental state a cause or a result of events? The book’s ambiguous nature leaves the story wide open for interpretation. You never learn why the Blackwood family was poisoned, so you are left to guess in this thought-provoking read.
Publisher’s Description
Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Movie Trailer for We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2019)
About Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author whose works include Hangsaman, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916 and died at the age of 48 in Vermont.
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