First published 2011
An orphaned teenage girl finds herself under the cold dominion of Great Granny Webster, a terrifying matriarch who rules her aristocratic household with brutal indifference. The girl watches as this steely woman destroys lives with calculated cruelty, presiding over a world of privilege that conceals gothic horrors. Through the teenager's unflinching observations, the aristocracy's grand facades crumble to reveal the madness festering within their great houses. Webster herself emerges as a chilling force of nature, a woman so consumed by self-regard that she leaves devastation in her wake. The girl must navigate this landscape of ruined relatives and broken spirits while confronting the monster at its center. Caroline Blackwood crafts a darkly comic portrait of inherited damage, where wealth and breeding cannot mask the fundamental cruelty that passes from generation to generation.
Genres: abuse, 20th-century, gothic-horror, family-drama, dark
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-protagonist, dysfunctional-family, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-Century
142 pages · Paperback · Christian Bourgeois
Content warnings: abuse, mental-illness