We Have Always Lived in the Castle

First published in 1962, this novel is narrated by eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine Blackwood, who lives with her agoraphobic sister Constance and their damaged Uncle Julian in a boarded family mansion. Most of the Blackwoods died of poison at dinner; Constance was tried and acquitted, and the village still hates the house. Merricat keeps the world out with buried charms, avoided words, and fantasies of punishment. Cousin Charles arrives to reopen the rooms and the fortune, and the sisters' sealed order begins to fail. The book is a gothic novel of family isolation and village hostility, not a detective puzzle.

Bound in blue cloth, covers screen-printed in black and white with a picture. Blue endpapers printed in black with a picture. Metallic foiled page tops. Clamshell box with central magnetic opening, covered in paper printed with a colour picture. Enclosed print for framing printed on Natural Evolution paper.