We recently read the classic 1962 mystery thriller We Have Always Lived In The Castle, the final novel from acclaimed author Shirley Jackson.
We were inspired to read by the news that the book is to be adapted for a film starring a BMAF fav Alexandra Daddario with further cast members including Sebastian Stan; Taissa Farmiga and Crispin Glover.
The film tells the story of an isolated family, who lost four members to poisoning. Constance (Daddario) was arrested on suspicion of murderwhen the poison was found in blackberries put on the top of the family meal.
Constance did not even put them on the meal and despite no charges being brought to her, the rest of her village clearly feel she did it and as such she has not left the family home for 6 years, going no further than the garden.
Constance lives alone with her younger sister Merricat (Farmiga) and their Uncle Julian (Glover) who is confined to a wheelchair. He spends his time writing and then re-writing his memoirs and making demands of the 2 sisters to bring him food etc.
Merricat is the family’s only link to the outside world, when she visits the village shop a couple of times a week, she sees the towns hate for the family and is often taunted.
Merricat is very concerned for her sister and also believes in magic and due to this, she puts up things around the house including a book she nails to a tree when she believes a dangerous change is coming.
This coincides with the arrival of their estranged cousin, Charles (Stan) arriving to visit them.
Constance and Charles confide in each other which upsets Merricat but he does not care and in fact he encourages her rage and jealousy by being rude to her, as well as being impatient to Julian’s many demands from being confined to his room and wheelchair.
Eventually Constance and Merricat will get involved in a huge argument with devastating consequences to the castle home and secrets of the family killed by poison will be revealed.
The book was one of Time magazines top 10 of 1962 and was still a good read to this date. The book being relatively short will no doubt be expanded to make the film, but we are hopeful it will still be one to watch, however, we have reason to be caution from adaptation of the authors work previously.
The author’s classic 1959 book The Haunting of Hill House was adapted into a film twice, both known as The Haunting, once in 1963 and is considering faithful to the book
Unfortunately, we have only seen the awful 1999 version starring Liam Neeson; Owen Wilson and Catherine Zeta-Jones from director Jane DeBont.
This film is being produced by Michael Douglas and has acclaimed director Stacie Passon behind the camera as well as working on the screenplay with Mark Kruger.
Are you a fan of Shirley Jackson’s work? Are you looking forward to this movie adaptation? We would love to hear from you
You can find the book at Amazon here:
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