The Fate of Mary Rose

THE PITCH-BLACK REDISCOVERED CLASSIC OF 2024

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Great Granny Webster, this twisted modern classic is perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and Celia Dale.

'One of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived' Virginia Feito

'This chillingly profound story drips with classy darkness. . . a one-way descent into the abyss' Janice Hallett

'A dark masterpiece' Camilla Grudova

'Vibrates with a frenzied, manic menace' Lucy Scholes

'A devastating investigation of neurosis, hysteria and cruelty' Observer

'A winner . . . Guaranteed to disturb' Sunday Times

'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith' Araminta Hall

***

She was dead even before I became aware of her existence . . .

A child has been abducted from a sleepy Kent village, her face plastered across the media.

As the crime unleashes a wave of hysteria, the claustrophobic world of Rowan Anderson and his inscrutable wife begins to disintegrate. Consumed by her macabre fixation, Cressida is determined to save their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from Rowan himself.

With caustic wit and pitch-black brilliance, Caroline Blackwood creates a skin-crawling - and utterly compulsive - story of repressed violence, female rage, and maternal obsession.

INTRODUCED BY CAMILLA GRUDOVA

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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