The Upstairs House: A Novel

By Julia Fine

Winner of the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award

A Good Morning America Book of the Month Selection • A Popsugar Must-Read Book of the Month • A Buzzfeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year

“Provocative…. [An] assured, beautifully written book.” —Sarah Lyall, New York Times

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). 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780062975843

Julia Fine

Julia Fine is the author of The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children.

Book preview

Reviews for The Upstairs House

[carol420 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[perednia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A twisty, thoughtful, fascinating and unsettling story of a new mother who discovers Margaret Wise Brown is building a house above her condo.

[purplepaste-311796 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Upstairs House presents the best post-partum period descriptions I have ever come across. I found myself having PTSD (not using that lightly) while reading. The narrator's experiences were very relatable and easily remembered by me-- which made her dive into surrealism so disturbing.
The narrator is haunted by Margaret Wise Brown and her lover, Michael Strange. As someone who also studied children's literature at the graduate level, I found this to be very jarring. MWB is not someone who is mentioned frequently outside of academics. To have her pop up, much less with Strange, felt nightmarishly tailored to me. There is also a very strong "Yellow Wallpaper" aspect to the plot.