Great Granny Webster

by Caroline Blackwood

Book Overview

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize The real-life Guinness heiress offers an inside look at the lives of eccentric aristocrats in this "masterful . . . macabre fairy-tale and blackly humorous family... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684156482
• ISBN13: 9780684156484
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 135 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Truly good.

It certainly didn't hurt to have your husband, Robert Lowell, peaking over your shoulder. A very fine book.

"A behind-the-scenes look at a wacky aristocratic family"

Blackwood was the heir to the Guinness beer fortune, and she was quite the bohemian rebelling against her wealthy family. Great Granny Webster is a partly autobiographical novel and a behind-the-scenes look at a great, wacky aristocratic family.

Dark, grimly funny novella

Great Granny Webster is a short, pointed look at three generations of eccentric, damaged women from the point of view of their descendant, a young girl. The portraits of the rigid, determinedly unhappy Great Granny Webster, her flighty, insane daughter, and the outwardly frivolous but suicidal granddaughter are classic black comedy, amusing and depressing together. The women dominate the story; the men are either dead (the narrator's father), absent (her brother), or ineffectual (her grandfather). The book is short, but the characters are affecting and vividly portrayed.