Wednesday 14 March 2012

A quick note to say I am guesting on Eva Dolan's Loitering With Intent site today, with a post in her Criminal Classics series - basically some great writers (and me!) writing about books which feature crimes but which aren't necessarily 'crime fiction'

I take on Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

I didn't have room in my word count to quote the opening paragraph, but it is one of my all time favourites, so here it is in all its spender:
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live withmy sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenent, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead. 

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