Works of genius in this week’s Retro fiction: GREAT GRANNY WEBSTER by Caroline Blackwood,
GREAT GRANNY WEBSTER by Caroline Blackwood (Virago £10.99, 160pp)
Controversially denied the 1977 Booker Prize, this autobiographical novel from aristocratic Blackwood is cruelly dark and brilliantly funny.
An unnamed young girl is sent to convalesce with her monstrous great-grandmother who sits all day in an upright chair, waited on by a limping, one-eyed, old maid, in a cold, forbidding house in post-war Hove.
She is matriarch to generations of disturbed women – an insane daughter floating around a decaying mansion in Ireland, a frivolous yet suicidal granddaughter, creations so vivid you can almost touch them.
Years later, the girl revisits Hove in a scene so grotesque and deadpan it is hilarious. A work of genius.
BAD ATTITUDES by Agnes Owens (Polygon £8.99, 176pp)
Republishing Owens’ novels to celebrate the centenary of her birth restores her to the status she deserves: a blackly funny chronicler in authentic, spare prose of poor, working-class Scottish lives.
It’s the 1980s and the Dawsons have been rehoused in a council flat but truanting son Peter haunts their old home, awaiting demolition, where he meets dubious Shanky, who refuses to move out, and a family of ‘tinkers’.
Peter’s mother Rita suffers her boozy husband’s rages and the snooping of their gossipy new neighbour, so resorts to desperate acts to escape.
But when a social worker is murdered, suspicion runs wild and hopes are shattered. Not a word is wasted.
THE INNOCENT PARTY by Celia Dale (Daunt £11.99 272pp)
The Innocent party is available now
The lonely, vulnerable and easily deceived are Dale’s favourite subjects, portrayed with a blend of pity and detachment. Here, 12-year-old Linda lives with resentful mum Vera and adored travelling salesman dad, Denny, in a 1970s high-rise flat.
She lives for the days her father is home and dreams of being older and going to pubs with him. But what Linda doesn’t understand are Denny’s violent sexual demands and Vera’s despairing abortions.
When something terrible happens, she becomes increasingly manipulative in her greed for Denny’s attention, spiralling towards a chilling and shocking climax.