Wir haben schon immer im Schloß gelebt (1962)

While this review indicates a 2019 read date, I have read it every year since for the month of Halloween. Spoilers.

I highly recommend this for slow dread fans who enjoy reading about beautiful houses, like me. I was blown away when I first read this and couldn't articulate my feelings, so no review. Second read, it was still slow dread and great, but no reviews because where would I begin and I felt like I'd miss pointing out something important. The introduction to the book was marvelous and this time, made several scenes way creepier. Originally it just made me eager to dive in.

This story is from the POV of a narrator-protagonist with some kind of severe mental health issue, with maladaptive daydreaming being a convincing beginning. Maladaptive daydreaming is not harmful, but can make life complicated. Mary Katherine is also immature, perceives relationships in an overly complicated way, and is strongly bonded to her sister, Constance. She is both dismissive and suspicious of others who would otherwise be perceived as friendly, except her first cousin Charles. Charles is a greedy, horrible (censored) whose sole motivation was to get Constance to give him every scrap of the family's wealth and used sex (subtext) to manipulate her, to near success. Mary Katherine is often seen as intentionally lighting the house on fire to scare off Charles, but to me it read like she knocked the pipe off the desk to aggravate Charles while not really aware of the live embers. Charles hates Mary Katherine, infantilizes her, and nearly gets her institutionalized so he can bang her sister in peace. He wanted a hot girl and money, and was definitely starting to get both. When the firefighters showed up, he kept howling about the safe. I was convinced he wanted the remaining Blackwoods dead because Constance wasn't having enough sex with him, and he wasn't shy about hating everyone else.

The villagers storm the house and smash pretty much everything in sight, and this is after years of tormenting the Blackwoods for being old money, eccentric, and within the last six years, murderers. The scene upsets me every time. Constance's agoraphobia, which she was trying to change, returns to its usual levels, and understandably so. The ending, for awhile, was always the weirdest and creepiest part: the villagers apologize and regularly deliver food, and respectfully leave the Blackwood women be...after smashing up their house and screaming at them with rage. The story builds up Constance as the murderer due to her being the family cook and the murder weapon being poisoned sugar on blackberries. Three quarters into the book, it's casually slipped in that Mary Katherine was. This originally chilled me and I knew I'd have to read the book again. Now, yeah, I knew it was coming. I do think it's clever, though, and I mean, Mary Katherine knows about poisons. I don't recall her explaining why she did it, though. ( )

Jackson's masterpiece beside The Lottery, a novel about the non-conformist that Jackson knew herself so well. The odd damaged trio of Mary, Constance, and Julian are both hated and loved to death because of their otherness. Why can't people just leave them alone to be happy in their weirdness?

Many have called the narrator unreliable but I found that to be untrue as Merricat's fantasies are as well defined as her reality is. Also pegged as a mystery but you will figure out who and what happened as soon as Julian begins his meandering about that fateful day six years ago. ( )

Evil and lovely. I love this book so much. ( )

Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle tells the story of the Blackwood family who has sadly been reduced to just three members. Several years prior, four other members of the family died from acute arsenic poisoning.

Elder sister Constance was tried for the deaths of her family, but was later released. She and her younger sister Merricat continue to live in their ancestral home, with only uncle Julian, who is confined to a wheelchair, for company. All that changes when a distant relative turns up, trying to get the remaining family fortune. Charles sweeps in with grand plans and thoroughly disrupts the Blackwood household. Tragedy strikes, but from it comes a greater solidarity.

I found myself rather underwhelmed by this particular story. I've read and enjoyed Hill House, but this time the writing fell rather flat for me. I never got invested in any of the characters, save Charles and that only because I loathed him through and through.

Charles blundered onto the scene, trying to 'fix things' that didn't meet his standards, and nothing about the life these two sisters were leading made him happy. He wanted to put Julian in a facility because the older man was an 'inconvenience' with his poison-induced neurological damage. That really triggered me. And it's not as if the skeez cared about any of them. He just wanted access to money he felt entitled to.

Merricat's efforts to drive Charles away lead to irrevocable changes and loss. A fire destroys the upper level of their home, and spiteful townsfolk follow the fire-engines to the house and loot it. The only saving grace was that the townspeople (mostly) realised they had done wrong after the fact and made amends.

Recommended if you are a Shirley Jackson fan or enjoy psychological reads, old-school.

***Purchased and read for my own enjoyment, such as it wasn't. ( )

Già nel primo paragrafo del romanzo, Shirley Jackson è capace di inquietare il lettore e, infatti, proprio l'incipit è citato nel risvolto di copertina a mo' d'esempio.

Non immaginatevi un thriller pieno di sangue, violenza o morti efferate: l'inquietudine che Abbiamo sempre vissuto nel castello trasmette deriva da una normalità sottilmente malata, da un'idiosincrasia per il mondo in quanto portatore di caos.

Gli abitanti di casa Blackwood, infatti, vivono felicemente persi nelle loro menti: Zio Julian continua a rivivere il giorno in cui gran parte della famiglia morì avvelenata, mentre Mary Katherine “Merricat”, voce narrante, sembra un incrocio tra una piccola strega e un dispettoso folletto dei boschi. Constance Blackwood, invece, sorella maggiore di Merricat, è bloccata in casa dalla paura di ciò che c'è “là fuori”, compresa la furia dei compaesani che la reputano colpevole della morte dei suoi familiari. Eppure anche lei non sembra del tutto umana: nel suo sconfinato amore per il suo orto e per la cucina, assomiglia ad una fata benefica, leggiadra ed eterea.

E proprio questo alone di soprannaturalità finirà per fagocitare le vite degli abitanti di casa Blackwood, dopo che queste saranno sconvolte dall'arrivo del cugino Charles, il quale rappresenta la summa di tutto il Male che prospera appena al di là del cancello.

Alla fine, proprio a causa della meschinità di Charles e dagli eventi da lui scatenati, ci troveremo a fare il tifo per la follia di Merricat e incroceremo le dita affinché lei e sua sorella riescano nel loro intento. Eppure l'inquietudine non ci abbandona mai durante la lettura. Anzi, essa raggiunge forse la sua nota più alta nella frase finale, quando la conclusione di Merricat ci lascia assolutamente smarriti di fronte alla sua affermazione che non può che suonarci ossimorica. ( )