But is Merricat a reliable narrator, are her thoughts based in reality? Is what she is seeing and describing actually happening, or is everything, as was the case in the Haunting of Hill House, more than it seems? And so I was gripped: what is the truth, what has happened, and what on earth is going to happen in the following pages? As Merricat walks into the village to procure groceries, we see the village and meet its people, and we are left in no doubt that they do indeed hate each other. The narration, thanks to Merricat’s internal dialogue, is masterful she depicts the ‘us against them’ mentality of the Blackwood family - they hate us and we hate them. The book’s opening could, with reason, be the definition of an infodump, but here it allows Merricat’s voice to describe the village and its people in a way that builds character to a high degree, and so, after only a couple of chapters, everything has taken on a form. I found the book immediately gripping and Miss Mary Katherine Blackwood, or Merricat, a fascinating narrator. I’m not sure if this was me putting my own slant on things, or if other readers experience this too, but it was certainly no bad thing, and helped me feel right at home. I knew that Jackson was American, and I knew that the book was set in that country, but something about it seemed quintessentially British. When I began reading I was surprised at how British the book seemed. So when I saw We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Modern Classics) available for only ninety-nine pence as a Kindle daily deal, I had no hesitation in purchasing it and getting stuck right in, to finally read an author that is far more renowned than my narrow field of reading focus had previously allowed for.
However, The Haunting of Hill House, both the excellent Netflix series and Dark’s review of the book, changed that.
Up until a couple of years ago, I was not aware of Shirley Jackson.
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