Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived In The Castle

This book is at times very painful to read. It captures, in a seemingly natural manner, the way in which a girl lives with a selfish and manipulative self that has a very tenuous grasp on the workings of reality. In a way she can probably be compared to Lain from the series "Serial Experiments Lain" except that Merricat (this books lead character) is pure paranoid selfishness, whereas Lain is troubled, unsure and weakly, if determinately, grasping for truths. The link is in their very fleeting sense of reality. Whilst Serial Experiments Lain explores what happens when the world surrounding you goes wrong, We Have Always Lived explores what happens when you go wrong yourself. Traipsing alongside Merricat (the main character) it is impossible not to have a horrible feeling of unease. At first, the book reels you in by portraying Merricat's problems with the village she lives in, problems which are quite real. Only later, when what befell her family, becomes clear, do you start to see just how unhinged she really is in her interpretations and machinations. Not many books has me reeling with horror over what might befall the characters on the next page. This book sure did.