We Have Always Lived in the Castle - a great read if odd

Finally, here is the blog for the last book club meeting, what a fun time we had at Susan's house. What a lovely place and a lovely setting! We are still trying to figure out how the ferns got so big. 

While we were a smallish group, the consensus was definitely positive on our book by Shirley Jackson. I had no idea that she was as prolific and as well know as she was during her lifetime, which ended in 1962. Like many people, I thought "The Lottery" was the sum of her work, so this book was a revelation. 

This novel, quite slim, was also quite odd, the story of a prominent family in a small town that had suffered a great tragedy that in some way turned the town against it. The two sisters and an uncle that remained somehow survive, isolated from the townspeople that are beneath them and the other prominent families that they cannot bring themselves to include in their small world. 

As the story unfolds through the unreliable voice of the younger sister, Mary Katherine Blackwood, known as Merricat, who gradually unfolds as the iron fist of the family and the source of the tragedy. In the end, it was just Merricat and her beloved sister Constance, living behind the barricade of the castle, blocked off from the life around them but somehow rehabilitated with the village. 

How much time goes by is impossible to tell, other than the fact that the ruin of their large house is now covered with ivy.  Evidently, this is Shirley Jackson at her best, and that is very good indeed. The writing is wonderful, both the gradual unfolding of the story and the crafting of the sentences. The story is in some way a parable, with people who resonate with us, even though we wish they didn't. 

This is a short read and a really good one - if you didn't get a chance to read it before the meeting, find some time, it is worth it. The gothic, strange nature of Shirley Jackson's work doesn't cancel out the thoughtful stories, the skillful writing and in the end, having a moral to the story, even if it isn't the one we want. 

So on to our next book,  A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson. Our next meeting is Monday, September 2, 6:30 pm  at Gordon Gibson's house here in Goochland. Gordon, let us know if that no longer suits! See you all then!