Told via a series of unmailed letters, 'The Stepdaughter' is a dark comedy about a dysfunctional family unit, detailed with the author's typical cruel wit and eagerness to share the sort of spiteful insights that most people (and writers) would rather keep to themselves. A jilted wife, under self-inflicted house arrest in her Manhattan apartment, vents her resentment about life upon the teenage stepdaughter of her selfish husband's first marriage, especially irked by the way 13 year old Renata gorges herself on homemade cakes and then constantly blocks up the toilet as a result. Then one day, without explanation, Renata disappears...
If, like me, you are a big fan of Caroline Blackwood, you will be on familiar terms with her spiteful style and hilariously embittered outlook on life: essentially everyone is dangerously narcissistic and neurotic and out to manipulate and destroy each other, with family members being the worst culprits of all. Here the narrator is not only mortified by the existence and appearance of the stepdaughter ("a lobotomised infant"), but also neglects her 4 year old birth daughter (ending in an domestic accident) and bullies the French au pair because she reminds her of her husband's mistress. All seemingly triggered by a severe case of FOMO, in which she views these people as obstacles to the glamourous existence she deserves. If there is any sympathy to be had for such an unsympathetic narrator ("sometimes I feel like the evil stepmother from 'Snow White'), it is because the reader catches that she herself has been callously mistreated by a husband she still views, sadly, as 'very decent'.
Discover Caroline Blackwood's darkly brilliant debut - a perfect rediscovered classic for fans of Shirley Jackson and Ottessa Moshfegh
'A bracingly nasty book . . . Splendid, dark, often very funny' MEGAN NOLAN, Telegraph
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 the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, leaving J with not only their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but the sulky, cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous…
Battling their addiction to disco music, a gang of juvenile delinquents hitch a ride across an imaginary America. 'Discomania' reads like Kerouac's 'On The Road', if it had been written by The Shangri Las (which, obviously, would only have made it better). One of the prestige texts of outsider art, the author's enthusiasm for her story is evident from the first page, sometimes almost carrying her away. But this excitement at the opportunity to write, the evident compulsion to get it all down on paper whilst you still have the chance, is what gives the narrative the drive lacking in other books where the privilege to write is a given.
'Discomania' is also ahead of its time for what reads like a 'Young Adult' novel. There is a frankness towards and acceptance of queer sexuality, plus the plot does not flinch from dealing with gang violence, teenage pregnancy, teen suicide, predatory paedophiles and underage drug use. Although, despite the surface depiction of the USA as a land of anarchy and nightmares, there is a softness underneath. At heart, the narrator is constantly seeking love and romance, friendship and belonging.
As with 'Pepsi Cola Addict', written by her sister June, 'Discomania' is also a tale of a drug used by teenagers suffering extreme psychological experiences. Only here, instead of soft drinks, the trigger is the nightclub and its endless cycle of funky rhythms, inciting the kids into a frenzy of sex and violence. The idea that John Travolta and the 'Grease' soundtrack may signal the collapse of society lends the book a certain camp appeal, yet its basic anti-establishment premise is sound: the underclass will seek escape in music, until that is no longer enough.
A young woman discovers that dancers at a local discotheque are being driven to acts of insane violence.
“The place was full of swarming, pugnacious, dangerous missellneous reptile’s… Teenager’s everywhere pounded their way on top of each other crazily strangling, biting and slashing each other’s with broken glass, smashed records or sharpened blades… ”
16-year-old Jennifer Gibbons (1963–1993) wrote Discomania in 1980, alongside her twin sister June-Alison, who was also writing her own novel, The Pepsi Cola Addict, in the bedroom that they shared.
Jennifer offered Discomania to the same English vanity press who would publish June-Alison’s book, but Discomania…
Marina Chapman, now a resident of Bradford (UK), claims that, as a child in 1950's Colombia, she was abandoned by her family and raised by Capuchin monkeys in the Amazon rainforest. The plot has so many similarities to those mythic tales of feral children that a lot of readers have questioned whether this supposed autobiography can really be true. Personally, I don't really care. Never let the truth stand in the way of the great story and this is a great story, from the scary but mystical epiphanies in the jungle to the even more savage experiences of sex work and slavery when Marina is returned to civilisation. If some of the events are exaggerated or romanticised, isn't that the case with all autobiographies? I mean other people (not me) loved 'The Salt Path' and that was surely a much more insidious hoax?
Most importantly, although I had actually did not read 'The Girl With No Name' until shortly after I finished writing, this book is the closest thing I have ever read to my own 'MiStoorie: An Autobiography Of A Feral Child'. Which proves that my latest novel is also telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth...
In 1954, in a remote mountain village in South America, a little girl was abducted. She was four years old. Marina Chapman was stolen from her housing estate and abandoned deep in the Colombian jungle. That she survived is a miracle. Two days later, half-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did: copying their actions she slowly learned to fend for herself.So begins the story of her five years among the monkeys, during which time she gradually became feral; lost the ability to speak, lost…
