Title: We Have Always Lived In The Castle

Author: Shirley Jackson (White woman)

Genre: Fiction

Book published: 19622 and Read: Early Spring 2026

Reason for reading: Wanted to read something else of Jackson's and I liked the title?

Got this from my college's library. Fun fact, when I went to search for it I learned that they actually had two copies, and one of those copies is just marked down as 'lost' in their system.

First of all, banger title- I love it so much. Second of all, didn't really like this book. After reading the Haunting of Hill House, I was hoping that this novel, also by Jackson, would have an ending I found more satisfactory. It did not. This was unfortunate, because, much like THHH, while reading I was kinda waiting for the conclusion to tie everything together. See, the beginning sets up a murder mystery, but then that murder mystery is "solved" very quickly and without much explanation in the book's later half. Also, unlike The Haunting of Hill House, which I enjoyed analyzing in hindsight, there's not really many things to mull over once the book concludes. Compared to its forebearer, the atmosphere and world building just aren't as strong. And then of course, the incest. I guess that plot-wise it was the easiest way to have things make sense, since Constance is agorophobic, but I still really do not like incest.

On the brighter side, I liked how all of the main characters had some sort of mental illness. Merricat's internal dialogue was great, and reminded me of my own experiences with OCD. is I too am scared of people Constance, and uncle Julian is just so sad. Also I think it's meant to have commentary on class and sex- which I didn't fully get- but I mean that's cool I guess. One last, unrelated thing, is that I was browsing Neocities sites with book reviews before making this, and out of every site I visited this was the only book I could find a review for that I had actually read. Not only that, I found two reviews of it. So apparently everyone's reading this I guess.