I finished my J book a few weeks ago and due to finals never had a chance to blog about it.
It's by Shirley Jackson and I believe it was her last novel. I haven't read any of her other stories, though I know her short story, The Lottery, is famous and lauded many times over.
The book was quite good. The story was interesting and the narrator, Merricat, was fascinating. She seemed crazy, maybe delusional. Her accounts of events, at first, were fully believable, as it seems a narrator should in a book. However, the more I read, the more it appeared Merricat might be more than just kooky. The idea of a narrator skewing stories works rather well with this book.
The story itself is flat. The characters are static, situations don't change. In this respect, I could see why some people wouldn't like Jackson's novel. For me, though, it really pulled the story along. I thought the story wasn't so much about Merricat and her sister, but about their surroundings, their neighbors and how people reacted to them.
I loved it for its dark, creepy thoughts. I loved it because it didn't hold back much from the cruelty of others, the cruelty people can force onto others just because they can.
I have no complaints about this book. It was beautifully written and well worth a read.
PS. I'll post a picture later.
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