readingpicnic's Reviews (500)

Even though Shirley Jackson wrote this decades ago, her writing and the humor within it feels so relevant to today. This book in particular was very unsettling at first as Merricat told the reader what she wasn’t allowed to do, what objects could protect her family, along with her other rituals. The pacing of learning what really happened in the murder mystery involving her family was excellent, and I’m not upset about not knowing the motivations behind it. Shirley Jackson is so excellent at writing weird outcast girls, who I find to be VERY neurodivergent-coded. I would headcanon Merricat as having OCD, but I think there could also be some autism involved based on how relatable her thought processes were to me. There were also so many beautiful food descriptions, which I always love. 

The queer tomboy experience of growing up on a farm in the country was very relatable to me personally, and I enjoyed the author recounting these parts of her life. I wasn’t a big fan of the writing style sometimes because she jumped around a lot with random dates which felt disorienting, as well as repeating the same stories multiple times. I was often frustrated by the conversational style of writing and talking to me as the reader as if we knew one another by saying “but that’s a story for another time” multiple times and then never returning to those stories to explain further. The author repeatedly talks about how she wanted to be a boy as a child, but then she says that in another life she would have grown up to be a “carny, transgender…” and other things in a derogatory way, which I wasn’t too keen on. I think the author needs to unpack her views on transness instead of depicting it as a negative thing she could have been if she’d stayed in the country. I also found the fictional prologue of her burning down her restaurant to be a little unnecessary.

Way too heavy of a read for me right now.