A wicked stepmother finds her ideal prey in Carlone Blackwood’s “quite pilliant” (The Times) debut.
A lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation.
J is a lonely woman without even the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, but he’s left J not only with their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but with the sulky cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage. The presence of a pert au pair, Monique, serves only to make J feel more isolated and self-conscious. What she’d like is someone to blame.
Writing letters in her head to imaginary friends, J delights in dwelling on the hapless Renata, who “invites a kind of cruelty.” This is an invitation J fully intends to take up—and like so many stepmothers before her, she will find that wickedness, once indulged, is a difficult habit to kick. A mordant black splinter of a book, Caroline Blackwood’s first novel stands as proof positive of her eternal mastery—and mockery—of the darkest depths of human feeling.
Circa l’autore
Heidi Julavits is the author of four critically acclaimed novels and is co-editor, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, of the New York Times bestseller Women in Clothes. She’s a founding editor of The Believer magazine and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Manhattan, where she teaches at Columbia University.
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