Product Description
Great Granny Webster
Author: Caroline Blackwood
Format: Paperback
CAROLINE BLACKWOOD’S MASTERPIECE, SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1977 BOOKER PRIZE
*A New Yorker summer reading pick of 2026*
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.
‘Full of genuine black humour’ — LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
‘A darkly comic treat’ — CHRIS POWER, OBSERVER
‘Wickedly amusing’ — SUNDAY TIMES
‘A masterpiece . . . her humour is as wicked as it is mordant’ — JOHN BANVILLE
‘Idiosyncratic, dark and extremely funny’ — LUCY SCHOLES
‘A unique literary experience’ — PHILIP LARKIN
‘Gloriously wicked’ — THE TIMES
‘As gripping as a whodunit’ — TLS
‘Shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny, Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s best book’ — JONATHAN RABAN
‘Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith’ — ARAMINTA HALL
‘One of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived’ — VIRGINIA FEITO
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