“I delve into a lot of history books for work, but I almost always turn to fiction for pleasure reading. My favorite offbeat “discovery” this year was Shirley Jackson’s classic Gothic novel “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” about a reclusive family in a small New England village — replete with murder, psychosis, black magic, and social anxiety.
It’s a story as sharp and twisted as an ingrown toenail, but considerably more fun. Many people know Jackson only for her much-anthologized 1948 short story “The Lottery”; this 1962 book also features a crazed mob or two, along with a good deal more humor, albeit of a pretty dark kind. I picked it up at the recommendation of a novelist friend, Koethi Zan, who has recently published her own creepy-crawly thriller, “The Never List” (it’s also well worth a read).”
Adam Goodheart is the Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. He is also the author of the highly-acclaimed “1861: The Civil War Awakening”
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Kate Gallagher says
Thanks for reviving this book … I am guessing it is out of print now? I read Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” when I was in my early teens, and loved it, although I can’t say I really recall it now. Might have to take another look!! Actually read it back to back with “I Capture the Castle,” by Dodie Smith (a charming story about an eccentric, down-on-their-heels British family) which opens memorably thus: “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”