A wicked stepmother finds her ideal prey in Caroline Blackwood's blackly brilliant debut - now published as a Virago Modern Classic
8th September 2025
Paperback
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Summary
A wicked stepmother finds her ideal prey in Caroline Blackwood's blackly brilliant debut - now published as a Virago Modern Classic
Description
Discover Caroline Blackwood's darkly brilliant debut - a perfect rediscovered classic for fans of Shirley Jackson and Ottessa Moshfegh
'A bracingly nasty book . . . Splendid, dark, often very funny' MEGAN NOLAN, TelegraphA lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation. J is a lonely woman without the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, leaving J with not only their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but the sulky, cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage. Writing letters in her head to imaginary friends, J delights in dwelling on the hapless Renata, who 'invites a kind of cruelty'. This is an invitation J fully intends to take up - and like so many stepmothers before her, she will find that wickedness, once indulged, is a difficult habit to kick. A mordant black splinter of a book, Caroline Blackwood's first novel is a testament to her razor-sharp mastery - and mockery - of the darkest depths of human feeling.'Contained and ferocious' TLS'One of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived' VIRGINIA FEITO'Witty, observant, clever' Guardian 'The perfect book for people who find Joan Didion too even-keeled, Renata Adler too fair-minded . . . In its own way, it's a perfect novel . . . It deserves to be a cheeky summer hit' LA REVIEW OF BOOKS'Blackwood was in fact a writer of rare distinction, the author of wit-drenched books about the wages of class, women's inhumanity to women, bitchiness, greed, abjection, family, monsters' NEW YORKER'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith. Her writing is smart, economical and as dark as night' ARAMINTA HALLAbout the Author
Caroline Blackwood (1931-1996) was born into a rich Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. She rebelled against her background at an early age and led a hectic and bohemian life, which included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as 'a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers'. In the 1970s Blackwood began to write. Her novel Great Granny Webster was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize.
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8th September 2025
