Status
Available
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Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2002), Edition: New edition, Paperback, 128 pages
Description
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. 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.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Smiler69
Caroline Blackwood, aka Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, was well-known for her journalism and her novels, and also for her high-profile marriages, the first of which was to the artist Lucian Freud. This novel is largely autobiographical and depicts her great-grandmother, whom the
Great Granny Webster knew that I was meant to need sea air, and this suited her very well because apparently she needed it herself. At four o'clock every afternoon a hired Rolls-Royce from a Hove car firm appeared at her door with a uniformed, unctuous chauffeur, who would then drive both of us, as if he was driving two royalties, at a slow creep along the bleak misty sea-front of Hove. To and fro, to and fro, we would drive for exactly an hour while one of the windows of the Rolls-Royce was wound down just enough to let in a very small sniff of salt and seaweed-smelling air. There was something memorably awful about those pointless and monotonous afternoon drives in the vast, soft-wheeled, swaying black car with the silver emblem of a dashing sea-horse on its bonnet. In that car I felt that I was much too near to Great Granny Webster. Sealed off behind the glass partition that separated us from the driver, I felt that I could actually smell the acid scent of her old age—smell the sourness of her displeasure with everything, past, present and future.
She goes on to describe to us her father's family, who lived in an unlikely mansion in the Irish countryside which was falling apart so badly that it likely drove her grandmother to complete and utter madness, though one could be excused for thinking being saddled with that old biddy, Great Granny Webster for a mother would be enough to have driven her into the loony bin for the rest of her life, which the old biddy in question did facilitate by signing the papers to ensure this was indeed done. To lighten things a little, there is the wonderful Aunt Lavinia who couldn't stand Great Granny Webster and insisted on being light and frothy and gay and had many loving ex-husbands who financed her very expensive and lavish lifestyle, but still somehow attempted suicide and eventually succeeded to do away with herself, on the very day she'd acquired a very sweet pekinese puppy, leaving behind no hint of unhappiness, much less a suicide note. A dark novel with appealingly eccentric characters, it has the kind of Gothic fascination which will engage those who can laugh at the more morbid side of life.
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narrator in this story spent some time with as a convalescing teenager in postwar years because the old woman lived close to the sea near Brighton and it was hoped the young girl would benefit from the sea air. Great Granny Webster was a humourless, austere and loveless old woman who passed the better part of her days in a wooden upright chair which seems more suitable as a decorative hallway ornament than for actual human usage, sitting in it in a ram-rod straight posture not uttering a words while staring ahead with an unhappy expression on her face. This likely caused her great discomfort, but the narrator explains to us that Great Granny Webster made it her duty to make life as unpleasant as possible. The one time she left her torture device was to go on daily drives: Great Granny Webster knew that I was meant to need sea air, and this suited her very well because apparently she needed it herself. At four o'clock every afternoon a hired Rolls-Royce from a Hove car firm appeared at her door with a uniformed, unctuous chauffeur, who would then drive both of us, as if he was driving two royalties, at a slow creep along the bleak misty sea-front of Hove. To and fro, to and fro, we would drive for exactly an hour while one of the windows of the Rolls-Royce was wound down just enough to let in a very small sniff of salt and seaweed-smelling air. There was something memorably awful about those pointless and monotonous afternoon drives in the vast, soft-wheeled, swaying black car with the silver emblem of a dashing sea-horse on its bonnet. In that car I felt that I was much too near to Great Granny Webster. Sealed off behind the glass partition that separated us from the driver, I felt that I could actually smell the acid scent of her old age—smell the sourness of her displeasure with everything, past, present and future.
She goes on to describe to us her father's family, who lived in an unlikely mansion in the Irish countryside which was falling apart so badly that it likely drove her grandmother to complete and utter madness, though one could be excused for thinking being saddled with that old biddy, Great Granny Webster for a mother would be enough to have driven her into the loony bin for the rest of her life, which the old biddy in question did facilitate by signing the papers to ensure this was indeed done. To lighten things a little, there is the wonderful Aunt Lavinia who couldn't stand Great Granny Webster and insisted on being light and frothy and gay and had many loving ex-husbands who financed her very expensive and lavish lifestyle, but still somehow attempted suicide and eventually succeeded to do away with herself, on the very day she'd acquired a very sweet pekinese puppy, leaving behind no hint of unhappiness, much less a suicide note. A dark novel with appealingly eccentric characters, it has the kind of Gothic fascination which will engage those who can laugh at the more morbid side of life.
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LibraryThing member nessreader
As a character study, wonderful, but short on plot and it did not stay with me after I had closed the pages. Young girl's pov on her female relatives, contrasting examples of how to behave, how to show emotion (mostly, how not to show it) sexuality and domineering.
LibraryThing member Kasthu
What an odd novel.
Caroline Blackwood was an heiress to the Guinness family fortune, a 1950s socialite, and, at one time married to the poet Robert Lowell. Great Granny Webster is a semi-autobiographical novel. In it, the narrator tells the story of several generations of her family: her Scottish
Our unnamed narrator is not so much a well-rounded character as she is an observer of her family history. At the heart of it all is the family seat, Dunmartin Hall, a dilapidated pile of stone in Scotland. The novel is full of dysfunctional characters, and the only one of them that seems to have it all together is the family matriarch. As I was reading this, I kept picturing Great Granny Webster in Victorian mourning (although the book is set in the years after WWII). But one can imagine that nothing in Great Granny Webster’s house has changed in fifty years; she’s even had the same maid for four decades.
Contrasting with Great Granny Webster is the narrator’s unstable Aunt Lavinia, a woman with multiple divorces and a penchant for partying and alcohol (maybe an autobiographical portrait?). Saddest of all the family members that appear in this novel is the narrator’s grandmother, a woman forced into a marriage she doesn’t want, who eventually ends up mad. Because this is a character-driven novel, there’s not much of a plot. I really enjoyed this novel, despite the oddity of the characters (right down to the butler and footmen who serve at table wearing Wellingtons). Even Dunmartin Hall is a character unto itself, reflecting the crumbling nature of this dysfunctional family.
Caroline Blackwood was an heiress to the Guinness family fortune, a 1950s socialite, and, at one time married to the poet Robert Lowell. Great Granny Webster is a semi-autobiographical novel. In it, the narrator tells the story of several generations of her family: her Scottish
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Great Granny Webster, who lives in a mildewed cottage in Hove; her grandmother’s descent into madness; unstable, freewheeling Aunt Lavinia; and the narrator’s father, who died during WWII.Our unnamed narrator is not so much a well-rounded character as she is an observer of her family history. At the heart of it all is the family seat, Dunmartin Hall, a dilapidated pile of stone in Scotland. The novel is full of dysfunctional characters, and the only one of them that seems to have it all together is the family matriarch. As I was reading this, I kept picturing Great Granny Webster in Victorian mourning (although the book is set in the years after WWII). But one can imagine that nothing in Great Granny Webster’s house has changed in fifty years; she’s even had the same maid for four decades.
Contrasting with Great Granny Webster is the narrator’s unstable Aunt Lavinia, a woman with multiple divorces and a penchant for partying and alcohol (maybe an autobiographical portrait?). Saddest of all the family members that appear in this novel is the narrator’s grandmother, a woman forced into a marriage she doesn’t want, who eventually ends up mad. Because this is a character-driven novel, there’s not much of a plot. I really enjoyed this novel, despite the oddity of the characters (right down to the butler and footmen who serve at table wearing Wellingtons). Even Dunmartin Hall is a character unto itself, reflecting the crumbling nature of this dysfunctional family.
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LibraryThing member mahallett
sad story of a crazy family.
Subjects
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 1977)
Original publication date
1977
Physical description
128 p.; 5.03 inches
ISBN
1590170075 / 9781590170076