We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Penguin
Paperback
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Another masterful feat of worldbuilding and isolation, this book completely transports you into a summery dreamland full of beautiful cakes and technicolor gardens. It’s like Wonderland, surrounded with butterflies and roses and towers of sweets. It creates the most gentle and perfect dollhouse of a mansion, and then suddenly reminds you that you’re trapped here. It may seem like the ideal life, but only because you can’t live any other way. You’re an outcast, hated by your town and anyone who knows you, anyone who knows what you’ve done. That’s the catch. Your family died, poisoned, and the killer was never found--though everyone blamed your angelic, porcelain doll of a sister. But you, you’re wicked and untamed, wild and of the earth. Imagine Wuthering Heights’ Cathy, but on shrooms--a witchy imp bounding through the fields, burying coins and jars, nailing books to trees. Anything to keep the spell from being broken, from the bubble around you from bursting. But it’s all bound to collapse, living one step from the edge, teetering. And something is coming, soon, to break it apart and send it all spiraling down into the unknown.
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Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.
Penguin
Paperback
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Another masterful feat of worldbuilding and isolation, this book completely transports you into a summery dreamland full of beautiful cakes and technicolor gardens. It’s like Wonderland, surrounded with butterflies and roses and towers of sweets. It creates the most gentle and perfect dollhouse of a mansion, and then suddenly reminds you that you’re trapped here. It may seem like the ideal life, but only because you can’t live any other way. You’re an outcast, hated by your town and anyone who knows you, anyone who knows what you’ve done. That’s the catch. Your family died, poisoned, and the killer was never found--though everyone blamed your angelic, porcelain doll of a sister. But you, you’re wicked and untamed, wild and of the earth. Imagine Wuthering Heights’ Cathy, but on shrooms--a witchy imp bounding through the fields, burying coins and jars, nailing books to trees. Anything to keep the spell from being broken, from the bubble around you from bursting. But it’s all bound to collapse, living one step from the edge, teetering. And something is coming, soon, to break it apart and send it all spiraling down into the unknown.
-
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.
Penguin
Paperback
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Another masterful feat of worldbuilding and isolation, this book completely transports you into a summery dreamland full of beautiful cakes and technicolor gardens. It’s like Wonderland, surrounded with butterflies and roses and towers of sweets. It creates the most gentle and perfect dollhouse of a mansion, and then suddenly reminds you that you’re trapped here. It may seem like the ideal life, but only because you can’t live any other way. You’re an outcast, hated by your town and anyone who knows you, anyone who knows what you’ve done. That’s the catch. Your family died, poisoned, and the killer was never found--though everyone blamed your angelic, porcelain doll of a sister. But you, you’re wicked and untamed, wild and of the earth. Imagine Wuthering Heights’ Cathy, but on shrooms--a witchy imp bounding through the fields, burying coins and jars, nailing books to trees. Anything to keep the spell from being broken, from the bubble around you from bursting. But it’s all bound to collapse, living one step from the edge, teetering. And something is coming, soon, to break it apart and send it all spiraling down into the unknown.
-
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.