Book Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
I came back to reading Shirley Jackson almost by coincidence. I had just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House, and, as I always do with stuff that tickles my curiosity, I was doing a little research on it. That’s how I learned that the TV Series is loosely based on a novel by the same name written by… Shirley Jackson. Still imbued by the TV Series’s atmospheres, now knowing about its connection with Jackson, I was ready for another dive into her literature of psychological suspense and terror. Terror, not horror. Because one thing to appreciate in Jackson’s writing is that she relies on the former rather than the latter. To elicit emotion in the reader, she uses the tension between characters’ psyches and the complex relationships between mysterious events. Stephen King opens his own novel, Firestarter, with this dedication: “In memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice.” ...