Sunday book pick: Horror icon Shirley Jackson’s final novel ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’

Eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine Blackwood is a girl of very particular tastes. She dislikes washing herself, dogs, and noise. She likes her older sister Constance, the death cup mushroom Amanita phalloides, and the 15th-century Duke Richard Plantagenet. Quite tragically for Mary – “Merricat” – everyone in her family is dead and the people of the village hate them. This exceptional family of two young women and their uncle of unsound mind should illicit pity, but that is not the case – rumour has it that Constance had fed arsenic-laced sugar to the family, killing them all. Her acquittal in the court does not inspire confidence in the village folk.

Merricat had gone to her room before the desserts were served. Constance took no sugar. Uncle Julian had very little of it and survived the poisoning. The rest of the family was wiped out almost immediately.

The Blackwoods

Author Shirley Jackson’s final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, inflates and stretches tautly as myths about the surviving Blackwood family grow into supernatural proportions. Merricat, the more visible of the two sisters, adds fuel to the fire with her unseemly behaviour – she is equal parts obstinate and naïve, has a child-like fascination with the moon, and fiercely guards her family...

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