"We Have Always Lived in the Castle"

[fiefoe]

This is an excellent book to pick up when one is not in a very good mood. The narrator is so amiably peculiar that she reminds one that everybody has problems - in a positive way. (Sarah Waters calls her 'one of the great unhinged heroines of literature.')

• I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise.
• I played a game when I did the shopping... I sometimes lost two or even three turns because I waited so carefully for the road to clear in both directions before I crossed.
• I stopped in the doorway of the grocery, feeling around inside myself for some thought to make me safe.
• When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry... and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once,
• Constance could put names to all the growing things, but I was content to know them by their way and place of growing, and their unfailing offers of refuge.
• All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones,..., held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.
• I wondered about going down to the creek, but I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings;

Shirley Jackson also made Uncle Julian a dear:

• "...although I do not think that she anticipated anything so severe as arsenic on her blackberries."
• "It was certainly true that she thought at first that her cooking had caused all this, but in taking full blame I think that she was over-eager. I would have advised her against any such attitude had I been consulted; it smacks of self-pity."
• "I will write the book myself. If not, see that my notes are entrusted to some worthy cynic who will not be too concerned with the truth."