Merricat does weird things: she makes up power words and buries things in the yard-her own form of witchcraft. Okay, there is Jonas, too, Merricat’s cat. Without giving away too much, as there are spoilers if revealing the entire plot: the novel follows Merricat, who lives with two family members-her sister Constance and her uncle, Julian, who is nearing death. I think that, knowing Jackson, I was expecting a twist…and expecting a twist ruined the experience for me. I don’t think it was a fault of the novel: I think my expectations were unfair. I wanted the mystery to be even more mind-blowing than it was. It’s not too hard to guess the truth, which was a little disappointing. Her voice is so off (not as in an author’s mistake, but as in there is something “off” about her character) that the whole time I was constantly putting together clues to figure out what her real deal is. The novel is told by an unreliable (or, at least, extremely subjective) narrator named Mary Katherine (aka Merricat). I liked it, but I wished I had liked it more. I had no idea what the novel was about I simply bought it based on author’s name and started reading it with only the jacket flap as a preview to what it is about. I was excited to learn about this short novel, apparently her last published novel, so I snagged a copy. I can’t remember how old I was when I first read “The Lottery,” but I have been a Shirley Jackson fan since then.
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