The Stepdaughter

Punchy … It’s a clever and perfectly formed novel that I’d recommend to anyone who wants a good story they can start and finish in a day * The Times *A bracingly nasty book … Splendid, dark, often very funny – Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION * Telegraph *Contained and ferocious * TLS *Witty, observant, clever * Guardian *The perfect book for people who find Joan Didion too even-keeled, Renata Adler too fair-minded … In its own way, it’s a perfect novel … It deserves to be a cheeky summer hit * LA Review of Books *

Caroline Blackwood (1931-1996) was born into a rich Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. She rebelled against her background at an early age and led a hectic and bohemian life, which included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as ‘a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers’. In the 1970s Blackwood began to write. Her novel Great Granny Webster was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize.