As a consequence, the sisters are reviled by the villagers. We learn early on that six years previously, Constance was tried and acquitted for the murder by poisoning of all of the other members of their family. Narrated by 18-year-old Merricat Blackwood, the story unfolds of her life in the Blackwood family home with her older sister Constance and their Uncle Julian, confined to a wheelchair. Jackson is a masterful writer and her prose is cutting, with pitch-perfect dialogue, unforgettable characters and a plot that is simple and yet full of layered complexity. This book – a novella really – is a gothic suspense: sharp, precise, clever, witty, funny, moving, frightening, tense and dark. This was her last book tragically she died in 1965 aged only 48. My review of another classic that I have only just got around to reading: WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE (Penguin Classics 2009 first published in 1962) by Shirley Jackson, an author renowned for her darkly funny and shocking writing.
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