Great Granny Webster is one of the earlier releases from NYRB Classics (published in 2002), and it’s a slim one at just over 100 pages. You’d think I would have read it by now! But as I’ve discovered through the NYRB Women project, it often takes a purposeful nudge to dive into the books I’ve been intending to read for years. While I love the freedom of reading by whim, there’s something uniquely satisfying about setting a plan and sticking to it — particularly when that plan leads to the discovery of gems like Great Granny Webster.

I thoroughly enjoyed Great Granny Webster, though I’m still trying to fully process it and make sense of what I just experienced. This isn’t to say the book is confusing — far from it. Rather, it’s elusive. Let me explain.

The novel opens with our narrator looking back on a pivotal moment from when she was fourteen, not long after the end of World War II. Due to health concerns following surgery, she’s sent to the home of Great Granny Webster, whom she barely knows. This house, located in Hove near Brighton along the southern coast of England, offers little comfort for recovery; the narrator reflects that it “gave out the same damp feeling of cold that one experiences in many churches.” It’s an unwelcoming setting, and in the stark quiet of the house, the narrator begins to ponder the fragmented pieces of her family’s story. Her father, killed during the war, is a distant memory, and her grandmother, Great Granny Webster’s daughter, has been institutionalized. The narrator has nightmares in Hove of her grandmother visiting her bedside. However, the details are sparse — mysterious hints are all we get. Great Granny Webster is no help. She has her “idiosyncratic notion of family duty,” but she is far from forthcoming. The only thing she really says is, “I miss your father.” She says this as the narrator is leaving, which opens up a tiny window into Great Granny Webster’s otherwise completely closed off heart. Not that we can see much through that tiny opening, but it speaks volumes that it’s there at all.

As abruptly as this mention of her father is, the narrator’s time with Great Granny Webster ends. In the next chapter, we are introduced to her aunt, who has survived a suicide attempt. In subsequent chapters, we learn more about her late father, who, inexplicably, often visited Great Granny Webster, a trial no one can fathom. We also meet the narrator’s grandmother, who believes her children are fairies, and her grandfather, who is unable to make any meaningful decisions about caring for her.

This abrupt shift away from the title character — Great Granny Webster — was disorienting, though not in a bad way. It left me wondering about the choice to structure the story this way. The foundation we build with Great Granny Webster feels secure, and then, in the blink of an eye, we are pulled into the lives of other family members whose stories remain only loosely connected to hers.

On page two, we are told that Great Granny Webster has an “idiosyncratic notion of family duty.” I think that statement lingers over the book and fuels much of the narrative. Initially, it seems as though we are set up to expect that she will be the central figure — the one who pulls the strings behind the family’s issues, perhaps even the toxic force responsible for their unraveling. But this expectation is masterfully subverted. Instead, we realize that each character, in their own way, is merely orbiting around her, caught in the residual effects of her influence, rather than being directly affected by her actions. In this way, she becomes more of an unsettling presence — a haunting idea that lingers over everything without ever truly becoming the antagonist.

This is where the book’s true brilliance lies. Great Granny Webster is more than a character; she’s an absence that everyone seems to react to, but no one fully understands. Her legacy, though never directly spelled out, influences everything from the characters’ actions to their distorted views of one another. What Blackwood offers us, then, is a haunting meditation on the legacy of unresolved family dynamics, where the ripple effects of the past shape the present in ways that no one can fully comprehend or control.

By the end, Great Granny Webster proves to be a subtle, yet profound exploration of the way people are haunted — not necessarily by the actions of those before them, but by the lingering absence and ambiguity of their influence. The novel may not offer all the answers, but that sense of mystery and elusiveness is exactly what makes it so compelling. The echoes of Great Granny Webster, both tangible and intangible, will stay with me for a long time.