Daughters &
Sons

At 85 years of age Sabine Ponsonby seldom speaks anything but evil of any human being and maintains a tyrannous control over her large family.

Ironically, however, a secret act of kindness proves her undoing, causing her manipulations to lead to drastic and untoward results.

Ivy Compton-Burnett is a master of the well-choser phrase and telling juxtaposition. In this, one of the lightest and most comic of her novels, she presents a large cast of vivacious and quick-witted characters who, under the cloak of polite conversation, set about each other with verbal swords