Weeeee have aaaalwaaaayssss lived in the caaaaastle

Happy day after Halloween.

In honor of the holiday I not only watched Hocus Pocus (come little children I'll taaake you awaaaay...), but I read holiday appropriate literature.


You may know Shirley Jackson from reading the super creepy "The Lottery" in high school, but I try to forget that and focus on my college Jackson experience with The Haunting of Hill House.

Over the summer when I saw the spookily illustrated cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle at the Newberry bookstore...I knew I had to read it.

Castle is a tale of familial arsenic poisoning and post poisoning domestic bliss-ish of two sisters and an uncle. I mean, she was acquitted of the murders after all.

The only thing I love more than dystopia is an unreliable narrator. And Castle comes through, or does it, or is it all true, or imaginary, maybe it is...maybe it isn't.

While reading, I imagined most of the dialogue said with an eerie head tilt and scary lingering pause after the line. Try it:

"Who do you think will last longer, you or me?"

or

"Everyone else in our family is dead."

or even

"We are so happy."

...

All I'm saying is I would think twice about sending one of the sisters up to her room without dinner...

"Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar."
Shirley Jackson