Penguin Books, 169 pages, 1962
I kind of think of this as the surprise ending to my book challenge. I bought the ebook edition from Green Apple Books back when I first got my Kindle because someone had recommended it on Ask Metafilter, and then I never got around to reading it until finally I found myself on a train to Hiroshima on December 30 with 49 books read and thought "well hell, this one is only 169 pages long." And it ended up being the most original, atmospheric, and imaginative book I've read all year. The story, about two sisters who live with their uncle in a house outside the village after the rest of their family was poisoned to death, is brilliantly creepy. Constance, the older sister, who was accused of murder after the poisoning but eventually acquitted, is agoraphobic and never ventures beyond the garden, but far more unsettling is her obsession with housework and placid refusal to acknowledge any unpleasantness (of which there is plenty in the Blackwood household). When someone complains about her sister Merricat's antisocial behavior, she smiles and offers them a piece of onion pie. Uncle Julian is obsessed with documenting and solving the murders, and babbles on about the topic to anyone who will listen, far beyond the point of decency. However, it's Merricat, the narrator, who's the most disturbing. Eighteen but childish, she shows a slavish devotion to Constance, but imagines everyone else's deaths in graphic detail for offenses like knocking on the door. Despite her magical protections on the household (which resemble OCD more than anything), the Blackwoods' cousin Charles comes to visit, and that's when everything comes tumbling down. I seriously cannot say enough good things about this book--being inside Merricat's world is terrifying in a completely original way.
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