Narcissa

Richmal Crompton

Aug 2015 · Pan Macmillan

About this ebook

I don't think that people are people to her any longer. They're just mirrors. If she can see the right picture of herself in them, she likes them. If she can't, she dislikes them.

Stella Markham is the apple of her aunt's eye: gentle, kind, beautiful and accomplished – the model of a perfect child. Her guardians love her and her playmates worship her. Sensitive and thoughtful, she is the very image of nineteenth century loveliness – that is, until things don't go her way.

From Richmal Crompton, the bestselling author of the Just William stories, Narcissa follows Stella from childhood through courtship and motherhood, detailing the triumphs and tragedies of a woman who is willing to do anything to maintain the image of her own perfection, sacrificing those she loves to her own vanity.

Ratings and reviews

Crompton has a most humane touch when dealing with the kind of narcissistic personality she has created here. She manages to elicit sympathy in the reader for a character whose behaviour causes immense harm to others. She does this by showing us the pain and suffering Stella experiences as a result of her behaviour - behaviour that she is powerless to control. Crompton has a deep understanding of human nature and this novel attempts to account for how such twisted characters evolve. This is far more than the light and enjoyable read of the typical Middlebrow novel - it is a tour de force in psychological novel writing.

About the author

Richmal Crompton (1890-1969) is best known for her thirty-eight books featuring William Brown, which were published between 1922 and 1970. Born in Lancashire, Crompton won a scholarship to Royal Holloway in London, where she trained as a schoolteacher, graduating in 1914, before turning to writing full-time in 1923. Alongside the William novels, Crompton wrote forty-one novels for adults, as well as nine collections of short stories.