#yahoooooooooooo

Sorry for the wait lol

Inara: We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5) Thoughts: We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a pretty slow read, despite it only having around 170 pages. I really struggled to get through some parts, I think just due to the domestic, kind of mundane way it's written. Mary Katherine 'Merricat' Blackwood is an interesting, kind of odd narrator, and her voice has a very distinct childish and teasing tone. She dangles the details concerning the death of the Blackwood family in front of you throughout the novel, sort of teasing small details; the sugar bowl, the arsenic- but never in the book does she tell us what really happened that night. Although that was a really unique part of the book, it left me feeling a little bit unfulfilled, knowing i'd never know how or why she killed her family members and if Constance had anything to do with it.

I really loved the weird, whimsical descriptions of the Blackwood house and its' surroundings, (i want to live there and eat nice food and hide away in the forest) and Merricat's protection rituals and spells, burying marbles and silver dollars, breaking mirrors, nailing books to trees were so silly and childish that they kind of made sense.

Also the villagers were so damn mean!!!! And the evil, twisted descriptions of them from Merricat's point of view were really nice and sinister and childish. Like yeah Merricat's obviously exaggerating but if people were that cruel to me and the remainder of my DEAD FAMILY i'd probably view them with twisted, snakey mouths and wish death upon them too. This novel was veryyyyyy gothic. I've never read anything like it and i've yet to decide whether or not that's a good thing (I think it is) Finally, fuck u cousin Charles. whys he talking to my senile traumatised uncle like that.