Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saved this book to listen to in October, and decided to read it a little ahead of October in hopes that I could talk about it on a podcast episode.

To my taste, I think I like The Haunting of Hill House better. I kept expecting a more supernatural element that never appeared, in fact I was scoured the internet looking for mentions that maybe the girls in the story - Constance and Merricat - are ghosts or cats or something like this. I kept suspecting this at various points, and was actually left a little disappointed that it sounds like Shirley Jackson was rather making a point about exclusion and isolation in her own tiny town.

There are some bizarre elements, cruelty from the townspeople, a mystery of who poisoned the blackberries, and it's a very fun read. The audio was well produced, narrated by Bernadette Dunne.

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