We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

I picked up this book right before Halloween because I'd see it included on a list of the best scary stories on Huffington Post. Up until now I'd only read Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery, which is amazing and highly anthologized and if you haven't read it you really should. This book, almost a novella really, is about a young girl living with her older sister and sick uncle alone in a large, somewhat isolated family estate in a rural town. The rest of the family was poisoned and most of the town is openly hostile to the survivors. The narrator Mary, nicknamed Merricat is one of the most interesting characters I've read in a long time and the book lived up to it's reputation as excellently written and creepy as all hell.