Over the past few years, Shirley Jackson has become one of my favourite writers, partly because she excels at exposing the darker sides of domestic life. Like David Lynch with his seminal film Blue Velvet, Jackson seems fascinated by the horrors lurking behind the picket fence and other seemingly innocuous suburban settings, tapping into our fears of danger within the home.

First published in 1958, The Sundial is less well known than some of Jackson’s other novels, but I’m not sure why. With its beguiling blend of Gothic horror, suspenseful ambiguity and caustic humour, I found it utterly compelling – up there with The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle in terms of enjoyment for me. There are shades of Barbara Comyns and Ivy Compton-Burnett at work here – an English eccentricity that acts as an interesting counterpoint to the story’s American setting. In short, I loved this book and hope to find a place for it in my 2026 highlights.

Like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Sundial features a large, oddly unsettling house that seems to sit apart from its surroundings in terms of stature and mood. Here, the estate is ‘distinguished from the rest of the world by a stone wall’, which encircles the grounds, such that everything inside this barrier represents the Halloran family, while the outside world does not. When we first meet the Hallorans, who have a long history with the property, they have just returned from a funeral – that of Lionel Halloran, who was pushed down the stairs by his mother, Orianna.

Before the day is out, the formidable Orianna seems intent on making sweeping changes to the house, which she duly shares with the group. Lionel’s widow, Maryjane, is to be packed off to her former home, but her daughter, Fancy (Orianna’s granddaughter), can stay. The girl’s governess, Miss Ogilvie, would suit a genteel boarding house, somewhere in keeping with her sheltered lifestyle, leaving Aunt Fanny (Orianna’s sister-in-law) in the house’s tower, well out of Orianna’s way. Jackson’s mischievous streak is very much in evidence here as she blurs the margins between barbed humour and wicked savagery. As with Ivy Compton Burnett and Barbara Comyns, the dialogue is priceless throughout.

[Orianna:] “…I think I shall send Maryjane home again. Lionel found her in a public library in the city, so that is where she is going. She had a little apartment at the time, and I shall arrange for her to have her little apartment back again. She will not absolutely have to go back to work in the library, because of course I will be generous. She may even take up again with her old friends as though no time had passed; I am afraid, however, that she must not hope to find a second Lionel. One Lionel in a lifetime is, I believe, quite enough for anyone.” (pp. 15–16)

A little like Merricat from We Have Always Lived in the Castle, ten-year-old Fancy is a rather unsettling child; whether in truth or in jest, she is already hinting at pushing Orianna down the stairs, thereby mirroring her father’s fate, should her mother desire it.

“Shall I push her?” Fancy asked. “Like she pushed my daddy?”

“Fancy!” said Miss Ogilvie.

“Let her say it if she wants,” young Mrs. Halloran said. ”I want her to remember it, anyway. Say it again, Fancy baby.”

“Granny killed my daddy,” said Fancy obediently. “She pushed him down the stairs and killed him. Granny did it. Didn’t she?

Miss Ogilvie raised her eyes to heaven… (pp. 1-2)

Also currently living at the house are Orianna’s husband, Richard (Aunt Fanny’s brother), who seems to be experiencing the early stages of dementia while also being confined to a wheelchair. Finally, there is Essex, one of Orianna’s young protégés, ostensibly there to catalogue the library, but in reality, more Orianna’s pet.  

Events take a dramatic turn when Aunt Fanny receives a visitation from her late father’s spirit, warning her of a forthcoming apocalyptic event; but, despite this harbinger of doom, everyone within the walls of the Halloran estate will be saved as long as they remain inside the house.

When Orianna hears the news, she has little option but to believe Fanny, despite harbouring doubts about her sanity. If Fanny and Richard are going to be present at the dawn of the New World, then Orianna must be there too!

While The Sundial is not a plot-driven novel as such, the family’s preparations for the end of the world drive the story forward as the summer unfolds. Before long, the group is joined by Orianna’s longstanding friend, Mrs Willow, and her two adult daughters, Arabella and Julia, both of marriageable age; a distant cousin, Gloria, who also has the ability to see into the future; and a random hanger-on named ‘the Captain’, who might prove a valuable asset when disaster strikes. Meanwhile, Fanny is busy stockpiling useful supplies for the new world, from candles and survival manuals to food and other provisions.

With her powers to see into the future, Gloria predicts that the estate will be plunged into darkness by 31st August, which convinces Orianna that the world will end on the previous night. As one last hurrah before the new age dawns, Orianna decides to throw a farewell party for the villagers at the end of August, suitably disguised as a Golden Wedding celebration to avoid announcing the forthcoming apocalypse to all and sundry. Naturally, Orianna also sees this as an opportunity to strengthen her authority over the house’s inhabitants in all her queenly glory!

[Orianna:] “…I have also given some considerable thought to my own costume for the occasion; it is going to be in shocking bad taste, but of course it is for my last public appearance. I think to sit on the terrace under a gold canopy.”

“Disgraceful,” Aunt Fanny said.

“I want my people to have their last remembrance of me—if they have time to give me a thought at all—as truly regal, Aunt Fanny; I plan to wear a crown.” (p. 153)

Alongside the caustic humour, Jackson excels at investing the novel with an unnerving atmosphere and an ominous mood. For instance, as the apocalypse approaches, various sinister events occur: a large picture window suddenly shatters for no discernible reason; a doll that once belonged to Orianna is found on the estate’s sundial with several pins sticking into it; Julia endures a night of terror after being locked out of the grounds in a bid to escape; and Aunt Fanny gets completely lost in the garden maze, a route she knows like the back of her hand. We also learn of the village’s dark history through the story of Harriet Stuart, a young girl who was accused of murdering her parents and two younger brothers with a hammer. Nevertheless, insufficient evidence was found to justify a guilty verdict at the time, and Harriet was duly acquitted. While these events took place shortly before the first Mr Halloran built the family home, their legacy adds another macabre touch to this destabilising novel.

I don’t want to reveal how the story plays out, save to say that I really like the degree of ambiguity Jackson introduces here, as it places the reader in that liminal space between the real and the unimaginable, which might be the most unnerving position of all.

As always with Jackson, the characterisation is vivid and distinctive, perfectly in keeping with the novel’s Gothic mood. Even the minor characters are memorably sketched, from Orianna’s husband, Richard, locked in a dream world of his very own, to her buxom friend, Augusta Willow.

Mrs. Willow was a large and overwhelmingly vocal woman, with a great bosom and an indefinable air of having lost some vital possession down the front of it, for she shook and trembled and regarded herself with such enthusiasm, that it was all the casual observer could do at first to keep from offering to help. (pp. 44–45)

There’s also a hilarious scene in which Orianna meets with the leaders of the True Believers, a religious group that has long believed in the coming of a new dawn – their chief spokeswoman, Edna, is brilliantly drawn. The True Believers, it seems, are convinced that spacemen are on their way from Saturn, ready to bring about a higher state of consciousness, a theory Orianna roundly rejects as nonsensical!

All in all, then, The Sundial is a marvellous novel about a highly dysfunctional family, an irresistible blend of Gothic horror, suspenseful ambiguity and barbed humour in the dying days of an era. With the exception of the titular sundial, which occupies an off-centre position in the garden, the Holloran house and estate have been constructed to follow symmetrical patterns throughout. In essence, the ornament is a metaphor of sorts, a disquieting, off-kilter presence in a seemingly ordered world, just like Jackson’s fiction itself!

The Sundial is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.