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    The Upstairs House: A Novel
    The Upstairs House: A Novel
    The Upstairs House: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Upstairs House: A Novel

    Written by Julia Fine

    Narrated by Courtney Patterson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A Buzzfeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year

    ""A massively entertaining and slyly enlightening story nestled inside another story like a ghost within its host.""   —Kathleen Rooney, author of Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

    In this provocative meditation on new motherhood—Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening—a postpartum woman’s psychological unraveling becomes intertwined with the ghostly appearance of children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown. 


    There’s a madwoman upstairs, and only Megan Weiler can see her.

    Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.

    Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.

    Using Megan’s postpartum haunting as a powerful metaphor for a woman’s fraught relationship with her body and mind, Julia Fine once again delivers an imaginative and “barely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness, and hereditary inheritances” (Washington Post). 

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 23, 2021
    ISBN9780063069718
    Author

    Julia Fine

    Julia Fine is the author of the critically acclaimed debut What Should Be Wild, which was short-listed for both the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction. She teaches writing in Chicago, Illinois where she lives with her husband and children.

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    Reviews for The Upstairs House

    3.5/5

    68 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Loved this book! It’s creepy and unique but there’s such a spirit of fun. Offers some very thought provoking ideas about motherhood and legacy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I truly loved this book! Fine definitely pays a great homage to Shirley Jackson in this engrossing account of domestic horror. As a pregnant capable person, at reproductive age, Julia Fine's work definitely gave poetry to my anxieties about what pregnancy, postpartum life, and motherhood could be like. I think she does an excellent job at capturing the very real terror that is undergoing one of the most dangerous events a body can go through and what the fall out is like. This is shown through the eyes of the very imperfect Megan. It is not glamorized. It is gritty and sad at times but also so triumphant in its insightfulness. This is definitely one I want to read again. CW: Mentions of Self Harm and Pill Abuse (Minimal), Child Neglect

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very trippy...took me a bit to put the happenings together. Odd mix of story telling. Historical writers come to life thru the dissertation of a postpartum mom?? Who would have thought???

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I liked it! It was a good ghost story and a great exploration into postpartum depression.
    • 3/5
      The theme veers quickly off into an unusual, but fascinating trip into an imaginary life with the 1940s authors and poets, that is so real that our narrator, Megan seems to be interacting with them. I wasn’t too sure just how Julia Fine was going to carry this them throughout an entire book and still keep the reader on track. Why is Megan hearing strange noises? How does she seemingly connect with what can only be ghost-like images? The forays into the 1940s lives of these characters really didn’t captivate me very much since I was more interested in what would happen to Megan in the present. I was also amazed by how nobody around Megan seems to notice that she was struggling. They criticized her and urged her to get out more and even suggested that she to get “help,” but instead of offering assistance or even compassion, they just seem angry with her. Megan’s oblivious husband and critical sister were additional frustrating characters for me.
    • 4/5
      A twisty, thoughtful, fascinating and unsettling story of a new mother who discovers Margaret Wise Brown is building a house above her condo.
    • 4/5
      Megan is having trouble bonding with her newborn baby, Clare, even though her husband is bonding and providing great support. She keeps hearing noises no one else can hear and discovers that the children’s author, Margaret Wise Brown (long dead) has moved in upstairs. Megan’s dissertation is about children’s authors including brown. Margaret Wise Brown house she is building upstairs looks remarkably like the bedroom in Goodnight Moon. I found the connection between reality and fiction jarring, but then I imagine that’s exactly how Megan felt. Unable to work on her dissertation and hour after hour spent caring for a baby. Its also the story of women who are often overlooked. Even Margaret Wise Brown can attest to that. In The Upstairs Room Julia Fine explores the reality of womanhood, the complications, the creativity and the intelligence. Eventually, Megan finds a solution, yet like real life not everything is solved, but instead remains unsettled.