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I'm reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Here's my review, since I finished it soon after I recorded this read with me:
What got me was the cover and the only description given in the jacket: “ My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead...”
This book is about two sisters, six years after both their parents, brother, and aunt died from poisoned sugar. The poisoning was never solved, so they have kept on living in their house with their uncle, who survived, but has never moved on from that day. Both questioning whether it ever happened, and writing a book of the events to convince himself it did.
The two sisters have not moved on, either. Constance, who was suspected of doing it, does not go out, at all, and has tried to freeze frame everything in her life. And Mary Katherine (Merricat), who is the narrator. She makes weekly trips into town to do the shopping, tormented by the neighbors the entire time, and wishing them dead.
I saw similarities between Merricat and myself when I was young, mostly because the author does a fantastic job of rendering the internal life of someone that age. The superstitions and rules and games no one knows about but yourself. Merricat reads much younger than 18. More like 8, and it fits a family that sits stagnant in time.
In fact, this could have been YA, easily. Perhaps it isn’t due to how creepy it is. And it is intensely creepy. The author, who died in the ‘50’s, also wrote The Haunting of Hill House, and while I haven’t read that, I can say this slender book has a very haunted, eerie feel, as well.
Overall, it is about the deep love between sisters, the guilt following death, and the forgiveness of family. I won’t give away the ending, but it gave me serious Grey Garden feels.
I'll post one of these each new book I read, since I love watching them, myself.
Let me know in the comments what you read with me. I'm a librarian and I love to talk books!