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.
Astringent ... There is a surprising and inspired pivot from aristocratic buffoonery to familial pathos as J’s disgust turns increasingly inward. Sometimes the viper’s fangs sink into itself.
Gritty, nasty, and rooted in the delirious gossip of Blackwood’s own salacious life, The Stepdaughter is the perfect book for people who find Joan Didion too even-keeled, Renata Adler too fair-minded ... She uses short declarative sentences as a way of locating a mind trapped in a small space ... With its letter-never-sent scheme and its claustrophobic style, The Stepdaughter is an innovative text that works. In its own way, it’s a perfect novel, if a small and mean one, a savvy artistic choice and a match for Blackwood’s talents.
The apartment is a metonym for her mind: the claustrophobia of her thoughts, the suffocating sameness of her psyche ... The cruelty played out in The Stepdaughter is familiar territory. The stepmother, always heartless, self-interested, is a reliable stock figure.
