Good Night Sweet Ladies

by Caroline Blackwood

Stories and essays by the incomparable Caroline Blackwood – described by the Observer as ‘an expert analyst of female fury’, acclaimed by The Times as ‘a major talent’.

From its opening story – an interview with the blackveiled, razor-tongued widow of a famous painter – to its concluding autobiographical piece drawn from her wartime childhood at a boys’ prep school in Ireland, Good Night Sweet Ladies demonstrates the full range of Caroline Blackwood’s elegant and ferocious talent.

Of the ten stories included here, 'Taft’s Wife' is a study of male promiscuity, while 'Who needs It?' is set in an American beauty salon. Recurring themes are the terror and pity inescapable in relationships; and – in 'Marigold’s Christmas', 'Olga' and 'Angelica' – Caroline Blackwood confirms her reputation as a remarkable portrayer of women, as her society hostesses, harridans and ex-wives all blaze into life with a wonderfully sour and idiosyncratic wit.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

224 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

was a writer, and the eldest child of The 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness.

A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Lady Caroline Blackwood was equally well known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood.

She was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, her parents' London home. She was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at, among other schools, Rockport School (County Down) and Downham (Essex). After a finishing school in Oxford she was presented as a debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House.

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found Blackwood through her daughter's memoir WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED and whoa, I was blown away by this collection. Many accounts I've read acknowledge her talent and humor, but dismiss her work as cold, bitter, dark, etc. Yes these stories are dark but they are powerful and absorbing. Blackwood's voice is so original, she can compress a lot of meaning into a single sentence. The short non-fiction is just as impressive. The piece "Burns Unit" brings to mind such diverse works as Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk (Lorrie Moore) and 365 Days (Ronald Glasser's account of Vietnam soldiers, which I read as a young teen and have never been able to put out of mind ). I hope NYRB or some other visionary will restore Blackwood to print-- in the meanwhile, I will be chasing Blackwood's work through used bookshops and dealers, in person and online. Our library had nothing but our library is pretty bad-- hope other libraries still have Blackwood on the shelf.

[Keith Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caroline Blackwood was the rather wild sister of the last Marquis of Clandeboye and Dufferin, an Anglo Irish aristocratic family, now defunct. She wrote a lot of novels in the 1960s through the 1980s and was friends, sometimes lover, even wife, of some of the leading writers and artists of the time.

She writes very well and these stories are all fascinating, often humorous, always bitter. What I found most interesting was her attitude towards women. When now it is commonplace for men to be the butt of much fiction, here, although the men may be feckless and stupid, it is the women who are invariably the villains, vain, vicious and manipulative. I cannot imagine that the author was particularly popular among lady readers of the time. Note the irony of the title.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found these twisted stories refreshing for a couple of reasons. Firstly because they are so completely unlike anything anyone would write now for so many reasons. Secondly because I enjoyed the interior monologues of these ladies who are hardly sweet but are totally fascinating.