The Blackwood House rarely gets visitors. In fact, the entire village hates the very presence of the Blackwood family. Or what’s left of them.
“It happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner here every night,” said one of three remaining Blackwood family members, Uncle Julian.
Six years ago, four of them dropped dead from arsenic poison in their sugar. Constance Blackwood, oldest daughter of the father of the house, was accused of their murders.
She was acquitted and lives shut up the house with the two other survivors, her sister Mary Katherine and Uncle Julian.
Constance suffers from a severe fear of openness and people seeing her. She hasn’t left the house in years. Uncle Julian is mentally and physically handicapped, meaning young Mary Katherine must venture out into the village twice a week to get groceries and library books.
Mary Katherine, or Merricat, is the narrator of this book and something isn’t quite right with her.
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” opens with 18-year-old Merricat making her trip to the grocery store and she seems normal as she describes her surroundings and the people in it.
As the story goes on, it becomes apparent that Merricat is not all there. It’s a case of the unreliable narrator and this narrator may be insane.
Readers get a peek into the mind of this insane girl who has dreams of taking her sister to the moon on a winged horse where they will eat rose petals and look down on the dead dried world.
She loves to frighten people, wish they were dead and bury things around the property.
Their simple, isolated lives are threatened when an estranged cousin named Charlie comes to “help” them and seems very concerned about their money.
This isn’t horror and it’s not scary. But it is definitely creepy and it will stay with you a while after you read because you might not be sure what you just read.
The book isn’t centered on finding out what happened that fatal night when everyone died and who poisoned them, but what happens when two crazy sisters’ lives and routines are disrupted.
Despite the unhealthy and creepy way they lived for six years, I found myself wishing something bad would happen to Cousin Charles so he would go away.
Merricat was only concerned with being happy and keeping her sister safely by her side. And she would have done anything to get rid of Cousin Charles.
It’s a short book, the version I read was only 74 pages, but every page is full of beautiful imagery and weird words. I found it hard to get into at first, but once I did I wanted to reread it over and over.
It’s a story about the love between two sisters, mental issues, isolation and the phenomenon of mass hysteria. The end of the story will give you a different perspective of the creepy neighborhood urban legend.
