Great Granny Webster

July 1, 2002
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.