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Title details for The Stepdaughter by Caroline Blackwood - Available

The Stepdaughter

by Caroline Blackwood
Heidi Julavits
ebook
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A wicked stepmother finds her ideal prey in Carlone Blackwood's "quite brilliant" (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.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English