La anciana señora Webster

Four women, four generations. Great-grandmother Webster, guardian of the family's "correctness", secluded in a cold, silent house by the sea, which she never sees: she has always been proud of the "mere fact of existing without liking anything." His daughter, Grandmother Dunmartin, also confined, although without pride, in a colossal manor house in the north of Ireland, punished by the rain and an insane domestic government: among her exploits she has tried to kill one of her grandchildren on the of his christening. His daughter, Aunt Lavinia, a London beauty, lives at the opposite pole, between big parties, wool dogs, unexpected lovers and suicide attempts: speaking of cookies, she says: "Either they are delicious or they are disgusting. Like so many things in life, it is very difficult to know what they are". And finally, in the youngest branch of this eccentric genealogy, a fatherless young woman, still in the "clumsy listening phase", whom she visits and remembers and tells.