We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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. 

Review:
I read this relatively short book (146 pages) during a business trip, read in small chunks over the course of several days and one flight, and that higglety-pigglety reading messes with my recollection and impressions, but I'll give it a try.

First of all, Shirley Jackson (author of The Haunting of Hill House, "The Birds," and "The Lottery" among others) is great at setting mood.  Mary Katherine Blackwood is the narrator and through her eyes the reader is exposed to the prejudices and petty cruelties of small-town life.

Years before, everyone in the family died of brutal poisoning at the dinner table, leading to Mary Katherine's older sister Constance being accused of murder.  Though she was eventually acquitted, the scars run deep in the family.  Uncle Julian is obsessed with keeping massive records of that last day, trying to capture everything his dead family members said and did.  Constance can barely leave the house except to go to the garden.  Only Mary Katherine ("Merricat") is brave or jaded enough to go into town and buy the necessary groceries and other supplies.

At first, the reader is given to feeling pity for this family, and especially for the youngest who has to face the not-so-subtle insults and thinly veiled threats that the (understandably) anxious villagers inflict.  Though she is eighteen, Merricat feels like a much younger narrator, obsessed with keeping a set pattern and often playing odd sorts of games in her head.  She believes in sympathetic magic, as if nailing a book to a tree will protect the family from further upheavals.  Without a strong family or social standing to protect them from indignities and social cuts, Merricat resorts to the only things she can think of:  habit and superstition.

With the arrival of their cousin Charles, Merricat's world is spun out of control.  While our narrator sees him as the ultimate evil - someone who might take Constance away or change their style of life - the reader musto feel sympathy for the man who has come into what can only be described as a lunatic asylum and tries to straighten things out.  Normal, well-adjusted human behavior is juxtaposed alongside Merricat's surreal and maddening habits and the pity once felt for the family is eroded until the narrator can no longer be trusted.

With a narrator who is reliable (she certainly doesn't lie about how neurotic she is) but coming unhinged all the same, the story starts to take on new dimensions.  Why would an otherwise intelligent adult believe in magic?  Why must every week be the same?  Why can she not allow Constance to change her routines?  How far will our narrator and her family go to preserve their shambles of a life?  When the reader can see the narrator as an adult trapped in a child's mind - and a dangerously damaged child at that - nothing seems secure.  Nothing is secure.

The new "deluxe edition" (pictured above) has some delightfully creepy yet not overtly horror-inspired art.  No one should pick up this book thinking it's a "scary" book a la Stephen King.  It is very disturbing, though, and the closer the book gets to the final pages, the more the reader can see the depth of Merricat's frothing madness.

While this book is well-written and the character/narrator transformation is genuinely intriguing, I have to say that this is still not exactly my cup of tea, but I think almost anyone should get some enjoyment out of it.  And at less than 150 pages, it's a short read that packs a delightfully creepy punch.

3.5 stars.

The Shining Part Two

Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals (from Goodreads).

I did feel the book moved slowly in the beginning, only gaining speed near the end.  There was one unanswered question I had from The Shining. It was the part when Jack is thinking about what happened when he beat up a student of his. Because it was from Jack’s perspective you can see why he was so angry at the kid but there was one small line that I only caught because I was listening to the story. Jack hinted at believing that the kid “knew something” about Jack and I could never figure out what Jack thought the student knew. Jack never mentioned it aloud or in his thoughts throughout the book  and it was never referred to again. There is a twist in Doctor Sleep that answers that small question. I have no idea if anyone ever caught it but it bothered me.

Only one inconsistency I found between the two books was that Dan in Doctor Sleep mentioned something about his mother Wendy never going to college, where in The Shining she did go to college. It is where she and Jack first met. I cannot remember if she finished and got a degree or if she quit once they got married but either way it was a small detail that seemed incorrect.

This book was not scary like its predecessor but I do not think it was meant to be. We learn more about the gift of shining and the area of the Overlook Hotel is still important. The main point of the book was to see Danny again and find out if he can live after that horrible winter in the mountains.

I enjoyed this book and am glad that King took the time to write about what happened to young Danny. This is a slow-moving book and King takes his time in telling it. Avid and loyal readers will enjoy this book.

3.5 stars

A "shining" review

In preparation, or rather anticipation for the upcoming novel by Stephen King called Doctor Sleep (September 24, 2013) I decided it was finally time to read The Shining.  I have grown up knowing who Stephen King is. He was a guy who wrote scary, horror stories that turned into scary, horror movies on T.V. or the big screen that I was not allowed to watch, yet.  I watched the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining in college and was scared out of my mind while my boyfriend was sitting next to me in awe of Kubrick’s filmmaking abilities.  Over the years I have picked up a few of King’s works like The Stand and part of The Dark Tower series but I never picked up some of his scarier books.

Earlier this year I heard murmurings that Stephen King was writing a sequel to The Shining and was immediately intrigued. What makes an author go back to story after thirty-five years? Especially, an author who tends to only write stand-alone novels? Since I drive a lot for work, I decided to listen to The Shining and I was not disappointed. First of all, the story was written very well. We do not only get the perspective of one character, but all four of the main characters. I really liked this change in perspective because each character had a story to tell and all of their voices were necessary to complete the picture.  

We see young Danny Torrence who is trying to understand the thoughts he hears from others, most notably his parents and make sense of the world, which is hard for any five year old. We hear Wendy’s inner thoughts about her controlling mother, her fears about her son and her jealously over her husband and son’s close relationship. Jack Torrence, the man who eventually gets consumed by the hotel, is one of the most tragic characters I have read. We learn about growing up in a household with an abusive father, his struggle with alcoholism and every other event that led him to take this caretaker job. You are angry at him but also sympathetic. We even get the inner thoughts of Dick Halloran, the Overlook’s Chef, who “sees” Danny right away and explains “the shine” to him.  All of the feelings of these characters are explained in such a realistic way that these are not just characters in a book they are people you know or perhaps thoughts you have had yourself.

I listened to this story on audiobook instead of reading it and Campbell Scott did a superb job. He did not make a lot of changes in his voice when speaking when changing characters but when the hotel starts to get a hold of Jack you can hear it.  The good thing about listening to the story is that you do not miss a detail. The book is a little over-descriptive at times and some of the inner monologues become a little repetitive but overall the flow of the story worked well and transferred to audio format successfully.

I decided to watch the movie again as I was reading the book and the contrasts were startling. My boyfriend from college turned into my husband and he was still amazed at the cinematography. We both loved how the camera just followed little Danny and his tricycle (power-wheels!) around and around the hotel. I was of course, still scared out of my mind and angry at the many changed Kubrick made. There is no slow change that comes over Jack, he looks crazed from the beginning. At the beginning of the novel the family of three seems to have fun. They go to town a few times and during the first snow they sled together. There are random strange incidents that happen to give a sense of foreboding and you get the feeling that each family member is wary of their surroundings and has a bad feeling about the place but with nowhere else to go they are stuck, until literally they are stuck under feet of snow. In the movie,  Jack Nicholson did a great job and that look in one of the early scenes he gives his wife and child outside playing in the snow will haunt my nightmares for a long time. But he seems condescending and snide with his wife and child from the start and it is no surprise that he goes crazy and tries to kill them after a few months with them.  There could be a book written on the differences so I won’t go further but the change in the character of Jack was one of the biggest disappointments for me.

I cannot wait to read Doctor Sleep. If I can wait long enough and if Campbell Scott will read it to me I might wait for the audiobook. For such a terrifying book, I think I will need listen to it in the daytime, with the light shining down on me.

Rating 5/5 stars

Book Review: Feed

Feed by Mira Grant

Blurb:
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives - the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.

Review:
Ah, zombies.  Here is one pop culture phenomenon that I just can't really buy into.  Not that I'm opposed to zombie stuff, mind you.  It's just not my go-to subgenre.  Lest you think I'm a snob, I want to point out that I voluntarily went to see 10000 B.C in theaters and I have an unhealthy collection of guilty-pleasure Jane Austen rewrites.  I'm not "too good" for any genre.
It's just that zombies, while they have the potential to be genuinely scary and creepy, seem like a one-trick pony.  There might be shuffle-groan zombies, there might be agile-strong zombies, but there's little additional depth to be plumbed. 

And yet I read some reviews by other bloggers and readers that said the Newsflesh trilogy is crazy well-written and worth the read.

Was it?

At the moment I'm inclined to say "yes."

The plot - a conspiracy about the provenance of the zombie virus - is truly engaging, especially when slowly uncovered by a group of young adults working as the blog-based news team for an up-and-coming presidential candidate.  The main character, Georgia, is well-constructed with a healthily suspicious and snarky nature.  For good reasons, she doesn't really trust anyone other than her brother Shaun and lives in frequent fear for her life, just like the rest of the world.  Her entire professional life revolves around her blog and she knows the cost of such a transitory and fickle career.

There are truly tense moments:  burst of action inserted rudely into otherwise prosaic events.  Zombie attacks, terrorist plots, unexpected deaths and so on.  Of course, without spoiling anything, I have to say that the final climax made my jaw drop.  I probably should have seen it coming, but I just didn't.  At all.

By the end of the book, the storyline had me hooked and I had to know how it ended.  However, throughout the book, there were many points at which I was tempted to put it down because I was tired about reading about blood tests and how they were administered and how many they had to complete.  I didn't care about Blog Administration 101.  These are the kind of things that become increasingly annoying once you notice them.  Just when I would be getting fed up with reading about non-crucial plot details, something exciting would happen and I would be hooked for another 30 pages.

After reading spoileriffic reviews of the next two books, I can't say that I'm too eager to finish the story, but this book is probably worth reading just for the climax alone.  You can judge if you want to finish the trilogy for yourself.

4/5 stars.