Great Granny Webster

In her gloomy mausoleum of a home, the terrifying matriarch Great Granny Webster spends her days sitting bolt upright in a Victorian chair, entirely alone except for her one-eyed maid - and her orphaned great-granddaughter, sent to stay for the sea air. She presides over three generations of ill-fated women, and a twisted family history which spools back through hedonistic 20s London to a crumbling aristocratic pile where two children are kept silently hidden in a distant wing. This macabre, viciously funny, partly autobiographical novel cuts to the bone of a dysfunctional dynasty, and captures Blackwood at her pitch-black best. 'Dark and funny and purring with feline malice' John Banville 'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith' Araminta Hall 'Shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny, Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's best book' Jonathan Raban