“Our house was a castle, turreted and open to the sky” 

Jackson’s ‘We have always Lived in the Castle’ was a strange book, it has a lot of focus on the little things: unreturned library books, papers with an undisclosed purpose, six blue marbles, and it seemingly ignores the more pressing present issues and forces mental illnesses and darker truths into the shadows of the narrative. Conceptually that is really interesting but on face value regarding the story the reader interacts with the book was quote bland and unenjoyable. Nothing particularly happened for the large majority of the plot and though the characters were extremely interesting I just couldn’t get on side with them. 

The protagonist Merricat is an insufferable narrator with a hatred to visiting the grocery store, psychologically she is really interesting and would be brilliant to analyse but as a POV character I really struggled with her. I am finding this difficult to articulate as reflecting on the entirety of ‘We have always Lived in the Castle’ her character is fascinating but in regards to my experience when reading I just didn’t enjoy it or her at all. I reckon this could possibly be an opinion that grows and develops with time though. Aside from Merricat however most of the other characters, Constance especially despite her being a central character, don’t have very developed personalities and are too content with the mundane. 

Alike to Merricat, the plot was generally quote dull and the conclusion extremely unsatisfying, but once again alike to the books protagonist I feel it has potential to grow on me with time to marinade in my mind.