 "Mrs Bratbe's August Picnic" is a retelling of the Oedipus story, with the sexes reversed.Alexandra, daughter of the outrageous media magnate Hytha O. Bratbe, is brought up in France, falls in love (unknowingly) with her father, causes the death of her monstrous mother and blinds herself in remorse.The writing was considered (in The TLS) to owe much to the "shadow" of Iris Murdoch and the "ghosts" of Aldous Huxley and Virginia Woolf.