We Have Always Lived in the Castle - (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions) by Shirley Jackson (Paperback)

About the Book

Alone since four members of the family died of arsenic poisoning, Merricat, Constance, and Julian Blackwood spend their days in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears.

Book Synopsis

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review Quotes

"A marvelous elucidation of life...a story full of craft and full of mystery" --The New York Times Book Review

"A witch's brew of eerie power and startling novelty" --The New York Times

"I was thrilled by the genuine but meaningful strangeness of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle." --George Saunders

"Jackson's novel is so wonderfully creepy that students usually feel subversive just for reading it. Add to that one of the most brilliantly realized unreliable narrators in fiction and the book becomes irresistible." --Marlon James

About the Author

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965), a celebrated writer of horror, wrote many stories as well as six novels and two works of nonfiction.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude.