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Great Granny Webster (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – June 30, 2002

by Caroline Blackwood (Author), Honor Moore (Introduction)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 231 ratings
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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 portrait” (Literary Hub).

This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.

Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer.
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  1. Print length
    128 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    NYRB Classics
  4. Publication date
    June 30, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    4.95 x 0.33 x 8.02 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1590170075
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1590170076
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Great Granny Webster, Caroline Blackwood's grimly hilarious and semi-autobiographical 1977 tale of boozy, oddball aristocrats is back in print, and its title character an impossibly dour and correct old woman is just one of the chilly, eccentric relatives that the teenage narrator has to endure. Other loved ones include a deranged grandmother and a cheerfully suicidal aunt. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize when first released. Blackwood, an Irish heiress and one-time wife of Lucian Freud and Robert Lowell, is the subject of the recent biography Dangerous Muse.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Narrated by an unnamed 14-year-old female, this masterful novella is equal parts macabre fairy-tale and blackly humorous family portrait. Without being overly self-conscious in its artlessness, it reads like the guileless confession of a simple innocent embroiled in a tangled net of ravaged and ruined lives. There’s a marvelous simplicity to the tale." —Lucy Scholes, Literary Hub

“Shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny, Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s best book. In the monstrous old dowager of Hove, and the ruling class she represents, Blackwood found a subject grandly commensurate with her own extraordinary style of aghast relish.” —Jonathan Raban

“None of us will forget Caroline Blackwood’s Great Granny Webster, a matter-of-fact account—and all the grimmer for this matter-of-factness—of the temperamental and circumstantial misfortunes of an Ulster family. Although it’s deceptively concise, it evokes the spirits of no less than four ages—Victorian, Edwardian, pre- and postwar—in exact and resonant prose . . . A unique literary experience.” —Philip Larkin

“Blackwood loves monsters. No character in modern literature is more obdurately monstrous than Great Granny Webster. An Edwardian relic, this utterly pleasureless, stingy, censorious, ossified banshee, forever ensconced in her painfully stiff chair before a fireplace laid but never lit, is the stuffed and essentially powerless dragon of a musty castle, the remnant of hidebound and pointless traditional values, someone who has never in her life given anyone a reason to like her.” —Gary Indiana, Bookforum

“Great Granny Webster feels more like a memoir than a novel…but it is as gripping as a whodunit. There are passages like passages in a strange house: when they turn a corner, something unexpectedly shocking comes into sight. It is also very funny, and the characters are vividly eccentric—or just plain vivid: Blackwood’s writing never merely trundles along.” —Gabriele Annan, The Times Literary Supplement

“Blackwood’s magnificent works are like pure odes to odium, her prose cuttingly matter-of-fact. . . She should be hailed as one of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived.” —Virginia Feito, CrimeReads

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Reprint edition (June 30, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590170075
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590170076
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.95 x 0.33 x 8.02 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 231 ratings

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Caroline Blackwood

Caroline Blackwood

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
231 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars An insiders recollection of a disappeared way of life.
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2024
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Probably there are only a handful of writers who have documented their memories of the bazar and eccentric downside nof monied English families. Blackwood’s descriptions are for the ages and all the more poignant because they are based on reality.

God forbid that such a decadent and tragic way of life resuscitates itself again. But thankfully, due to this piece of masterful writing, anyone interested in the collapse of Victorian life is able to gain a vicarious glimpse of it here.
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Aleera
4.0 out of 5 stars Autobiographical fiction
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2019
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Interesting story, picks up more once the visit to great Grammy is done. Very much realism and true to the author’s opinion life.
One person found this helpful
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C. Bohl
3.0 out of 5 stars Book is so so condition
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2022
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Spine severely dented - not mentioned in the description
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Noelle
5.0 out of 5 stars Good weekend read
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014
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I am surprised there aren't more reviews of this book. It holds your interest beginning to end, and is short, well written, and easily read.

Unlike another reviewer who finds the Granny character almost unreal or hard to believe, I think the cold, stoic woman might seem disturbingly too familiar to anyone from a strictly Irish/Anglo Catholic/Christian background. Granny is peculiar, but does not seem fictional.

In fact, the author does such an excellent job in depicting her that I might have guessed, had I not known, that the book is autobiographical in nature.

Another interesting character is Granny Webster's adult, fun loving, grandiose grand daughter, Lavinia, who avoids Granny like the plague. By being everything Great Granny is not, the author poignantly wonders whether Lavinia is tragically over-reacting to some inner terror that she is more like her Granny than her conscience will allow?

Since I enjoyed this book, I am now starting "The Stepdaughter," another book by the same author, Caroline Blackwood.
12 people found this helpful
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JAK
4.0 out of 5 stars Caroline Blackwood was brilliant
Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2012
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I finally got around to this after reading CORRIGAN and I concluded that Caroline Blackwood was an absolutely brilliant writer.She is overshadowed by her life and died way too young but this sharp , concise novel is a gem.Great Granny Webster is a monster of a kind that many will not be able to relate to or even believe in .A rich hair shirt shrew who never met a pleasure she could deny or pervert.I do suspect that if you don't know the territory this may seem , unbelievable .It is all too true.Nothing can beat the description of Granny sitting around all day in discomfort waiting for a bad meal and non conversation and feeling , let's face it , quite proud of herself while she sneers at lesser mortals .Everything should be most proper !What's it about--Great Granny Webster--glorious Victorian Monster.They're gone now , more or less and unfortunately that's not entirely good.
11 people found this helpful
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Pamela I. Perkins
5.0 out of 5 stars Strange but Interesting
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2020
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The novel is a study of people - I found it interesting and thought-provoking.
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DBLUM
5.0 out of 5 stars The End of an Era
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2017
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Blackwood's biting wit and great observational skills make her one of my favorite writers. This profile of several of Blackwood's relatives gives a real sense of Great Britain's aristocracy, circa1950. A world that is no more...
3 people found this helpful
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Jim F. Baughman
1.0 out of 5 stars Editor, please come quick, and bring a hacksaw and some dynamite.
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2014
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It’s too bad I can’t leave a zero-star review, because this book deserves one.

It is so poorly written as to be hideous; an editor could hack away for years and not come up with anything worth printing. Blackwood has no gift for the written word, no rhythm to her sentences, and seems never to have learned that piling up adjectives and adverbs deadens a description rather than enlivening it. Sometimes these are comical, as when Blackwood writes of “lethal poison”—how many other kinds are there? Errors of fact abound—a Rolls-Royce never had a “seahorse” as a hood ornament, and air cannot be parceled out in “chinks”: “…she had a perverse terror (why is it perverse?) of draughts and the tiny chink of air that she would allow…” Worse, every character has only one dimension, and the aspects of it are so relentlessly drummed into the reader that the repetition is like an attack by spitwads.

At the beginning of the book the narrator is looking back on her fourteen year old self, and regrettably Blackwood writes like a fourteen year old; not one of the period she is describing but a modern one who litters her commentary with “totally” and “obviously” and “completely”, thinking such words spark up descriptions (they don’t). In this same silly tone, of a mindless teenager flopped on her bed, oblivious to everything but the phone she is using to tweet and text herself around the world, Blackwood writes on almost the last page the great awakening that comes at the graveside of the subject of the book: “I suddenly saw Great Granny Webster as awesome.”

Totally. It’s like, I’m so sure.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Rob
5.0 out of 5 stars UNDERRATED CLASSIC.
Reviewed in Canada on January 31, 2018
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This book is so great. Really glad I found this. One of my favourite filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson) mentioned Caroline Blackwood as being one of his favourite authors, so I checked her work out. This book is considered her best or most successful, but I'm really excited to read the rest of her stuff based on this alone. So dark and funny and chilling. (For PTA fans out there: it might even remind you of Phantom Thread).
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Nicholas Flynn
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect vignette.
Reviewed in Spain on March 10, 2019
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A short classic of perfectly composed characters. Tragicomic page turner. Loved the description of Dunmartin Hall in all its aristocratic decomposition.
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D. Legare
4.0 out of 5 stars Une aïeule formidablement monstrueuse
Reviewed in France on July 6, 2015
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Dans ce roman partiellement autobiographique Caroline Blackwood nous fait le portrait de la grand-mère Granny Webster. C’est une femme hors du temps, rigide, puritaine, froide qui vit repliée sur elle-même dans une sorte de grande demeure gothique aux alentours de Brighton. On lui envoie sa petite-fille en convalescence pour quelques mois. C’est l’enfant devenue adulte qui est le narrateur du récit. L’enfant se retrouve très seule dans cette grande maison aux rideaux constamment tirés, il y fait froid et humide car les cheminées sont garnies mais jamais allumées. Les repas sont plus que frugaux car Granny Webster est adepte de l’extrême austérité malgré son immense fortune, d’ailleurs la grande maison ne compte qu’une seule employée de maison borgne et cassée en deux par l’ostéoporose. Granny Webster est toujours habillée de noir, n’aime personne, parle peu et uniquement pour énoncer des vérités. Elle ne sort pas sauf pour quelques allers et retours en Rolls le long de la plage chaque dimanche et ne fait rien de ses journées sinon rester assise sur une chaise en bois très droite. Elle lèguera l’intégralité de son immense fortune à la Society for Euthanasia !

Granny Webster est un personnage étrange et peu attachant qui pourrait sortir tout droit d’un roman gothique. La petite fille devenue adulte revient sur cet épisode et raconte aussi la destinée des enfants de Granny Webster, des vies tragiques dont le sens échappe totalement à leurs protagonistes. C’est un roman court, concis et pourtant particulièrement dense. Les personnages sont incroyables et on a l’impression de traverser plusieurs époques tant Granny Webster fait partie d’un autre monde. Le livre sera en compétition pour le Booker prize mais ne sera pas le gagnant à une voix près, celle de Philip Larkin qui pensait qu’un roman si largement autobiographique ne pouvait pas gagner un prix destiné aux œuvres de fiction. Comme si on pouvait mesurer la part qu’apporte chaque auteur de sa propre vie dans une œuvre de fiction. Ici cela ne pouvait être connu que parce Caroline Blackwood était un personnage connu et membre d’une famille célèbre. Je pense qu’il vaut bien mieux que beaucoup de livres ayant remporté le Booker que l’on a vu depuis.
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Patricia
5.0 out of 5 stars A Gothic Masterpeace
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2013
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Caroline Blackwood is one of the most underestimated writers of the last century - few people have even heard of her. "Great Granny Webster" is Lady her masterpiece, a semi-autobiographical novel, it narrowly missed out on the Man Booker Prize because Philip Larkin did not think a novel that was so clearly autobiographical could be considered fiction. In this novella she defied her critics (who saw her as little more than an artists muse)and proved she had considerable talent for writing. It's shocking, wickedly funny and evocative. Highly recommended.
9 people found this helpful
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AH
3.0 out of 5 stars This is more like a four chapter 'taster' than a novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2019
Verified Purchase
Well written and good, descriptive, structure, albeit quite dark and depressing. However, is this actually a novel, or am I missing something? I had to buy this for a book club read and, at £8.54, much more than I would normally pay for a novel. I couldn't believe how short it was and wondered whether I had somehow ordered a 4 chapter 'taster'. It took me a maximum of 2 hours to read and I felt completely ripped off. Definitely wouldn't recommend.
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