The Upstairs Room by Kate Murray-Browne

About The Upstairs Room

Eleanor, Richard and their two young daughters recently stretched themselves to the limit to buy their dream home, a four-bedroom Victorian townhouse in East London. But the cracks are already starting to show. Eleanor is unnerved by the eerie atmosphere in the house and becomes convinced it is making her ill. Whilst Richard remains preoccupied with Zoe, their mercurial twenty-seven-year-old lodger, Eleanor becomes determined to unravel the mystery of the house’s previous owners – including Emily, whose name is written hundreds of times on the walls of the upstairs room.

My review of The Upstairs Room

The Upstairs Room is a modern gothic ghost story that I could not put down. It's deliciously clever, thought provoking and ultimately disturbing...I loved it!

The book centres around Eleanor and Richard who move into their dream new home in Lichfield Road, East London, with their two young daughters, Rosie and Isobel. The house was a quick sell, as the previous family simply up and left, leaving the home vacant for its new occupants. Their new Victorian home is vast, and as they have pushed themselves to the limits financially, they are forced to take in a lodger, Zoe, who is 27, to make up some much needed money.

This book is very much a contemporary drama, that highlights the issues of today. Those issues of trying to peruse a career with small children, childcare, the mortgage and the life work balance. All of these issues are tackled with empathy and realism, I believed in these three characters. Eleanor the mum who wants it all but is struggling to find her own identity, Richard the provider who wants the dream home, and Zoe, the young woman who has a string of disastrous relationships behind her and who works in an art shop but is not an artist. They all fascinated me, and were incredibly real to me, I think because of the amount of detail that was given to their daily lives and their innermost thoughts. For me, the most interesting was Eleanor. Perhaps this was because she was a mother like me, meaning that I could best identify with her. I felt the most empathy towards her, I wanted her to enjoy living in her new home, to be happy.

The ghostly element comes form the Upstairs Room in their new home. This aspect of the story is very well written, and I can't say any more without spoiling the story. I do think that houses hold memories and that you get a feeling about a home as soon as you set foot in it. This is what happens to Eleanor when she visits the house for the first time. She gets an odd feeling when she goes up to the top floor, but she can't explain why this is so. I do believe that you get a sense of a home when you visit it for the first time, that good or bad vibe, and this is what the author so eloquently describes. The way in which Eleanor reacted to this upstairs room, felt very real to me.

This book is unsettling, and blends beautifully the supernatural world with the normal everyday world that we all live in. The author does so in such a way, that I believed in what I was being told. The Upstairs Room is a gothic tale for the modern era. The hosing crisis that we are all in at the moment, plays out beautifully in this novel, albeit with a ghostly twist. If you love counterparty fiction that is a little bit different, then you will love The Upstarts Room...I most certainly did.

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an Advanced Reader Copy

The Upstairs Room published by Picador on 27 July 2017 is available to pre order from Amazon here.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak #bookreview

About The Futures

This is a story about falling in love, and of a relationship that's falling apart . . .

It's the story of a young couple, graduating from Yale and moving to New York in search of the shared future they'd always dreamed about. Of crisp morning strolls through Central Park, taxi horns and the bustle of tourists, salty hot pretzels and the glitter of Broadway and long summer days that stretch like shadows across the sidewalk.

It's a story of high expectations and missed opportunities, of growing up, taking chances and making terrible mistakes.

This is Evan and Julia's story.

This is a love story.

But nobody said it ends happily.

My review of The Futures

The Futures is a beautiful coming of age story set in New York. We follow Julia and Evan from when they first meet while studying at Yale, through to them moving to New York to start their life together. The Futures is a novel that focusses upon character and relationships. The story is in the small details, what is said, how a person reacts. It is a book that cannot be rushed.

Evan and Julia move to Nee York, rent a small apartment in one of the more run down areas of the city and begin to look for work. As Yale graduates, they believe that work will be easy to find, but it is 2008 and the financial crash is looming. Evan is lucky, he lands a lucrative job with a hedge fund company, Spire. He believes that life couldn't get any better. He has the perfect  job and a wonderful girlfriend. But, is he living the perfect life? Is his life perfect? Julia's situation is entirely different. She feels at a loss, with no job prospects looming. She does not want to be the 'stay at home wife', she is a Yale graduate. She wants to live her life as a young career woman. She is fortunate enough to be employed by a charitable organisation, gained via her parents' contacts. But is this what she really wants to do? Has she merely settled?.

Evan and Julia are complete opposites, and from entirely different backgrounds. Julia was brought up in a privileged household and has many society connections. Evan on the other hand is from a working class family in Canada. His parents own and run a grocery store in their small town. These social circumstances are important for understanding what happens in their future, in a way they believe that their social upbringing and status defines who they are and what they will become.

The Futures is the story of a young couple starting out in life. They have there whole future ahead of them. They learn about living independently in the big world, a completely different life to that of students. They learn about trust, love, and basically what it means to be a grown up. They learn that life is often way more complicated than it seems, but that there is always a way to survive, to simply be.

I don't want to go into the plot, but I'll just say it is a simple one, focussing upon these two characters and how their relationship evolves over time. As with any relationship, they need to find their role within it. They need to figure out who they really are.

I enjoyed reading this gentle and thought provoking novel. It resonated deeply with me, that feeling when you first graduate, when you are set free into the world, but you have no idea of what role you will play in it. The Futures echoes these thoughts and feelings beautifully. I loved the depictions of living in New York City and the beautiful prose and phrasing that was used. It really is s beautiful and engaging read.

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy.

The Futures, published by Michael Joseph on 1 Jun. 2017 is available from Amazon here.

About the author

Anna Pitoniak is an editor of fiction and non-fiction at Random House in New York. She graduated from Yale in 2010, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. The Futures is her first novel.

Follow Anna on Twitter @annapitoniak