When was the upstairs room published

Download for print-disabled. Check nearby libraries Library. Share this book Facebook. October 13, History. An edition of The upstairs room This edition was published in by Crowell in New York. Written in English — pages. The Upstairs Room , Recorded Books. Not in Library. Libraries near you: WorldCat. The upstairs room , HarperCollins Publishers.

The upstairs room , Longman. The Upstairs Room August 1, , Bantam. The Upstairs Room , Bantam Books. The upstairs room , Puffin in association with Oxford University Press. The upstairs room , Oxford University Press. Lou shang de fang jian , Da guang chu ban she. The upstairs room , Bantam. Checked Out. People Johanna Reiss. I absolutely devoured this book, as it was utterly gripping from start to finish. They're a perfectly normal family before they move into the property on Litchfield Road - a dated,dreary house that they hope to one day turn into a family I received a copy of this book from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

They're a perfectly normal family before they move into the property on Litchfield Road - a dated,dreary house that they hope to one day turn into a family home. However, things don't pan out, and the frightening events end up altering their lives completely. In a bid to support their house purchase, they get a lodger for the basement, a young woman called Zoe. From the start though, it becomes apparent that things aren't going to work out, due mainly to the eerie house itself.

For starters, there's the fact that Eleanor gets ill every time she's in it, to the point that she's vomiting every day, and suffering from terrible headaches. Zoe is plagued by nightmares, dreaming that a sinister girl is sitting near her, watching her sleep. And little Rosie, once a pleasant young child, starts biting her mother and waking in the night, screaming uncontrollably.

If that's not bad enough, there's an unused room at the top of the house - with walls covered from head to foot in the same scrawled name - Emily. So far, so haunted - and as a ghost story, it works brilliantly.

Think the off-balance spookiness of Shirley Jackson, or the subtly growing horror of a Susan Hill. Yes, we're talking great quality psychological stuff here. However, where this story comes into its own is the artful blending of the characters' personal lives into the story. We soon discover that Eleanor and Richard's marriage isn't quite as strong as it initially seems. Zoe's personal life is nothing short of a car-wreck.

All these details don't stand as separate entities from the main supernatural plot-line - rather, they are woven seamlessly into it, as though the characters' personal negativity actively feeds whatever is haunting the house. I also loved the end, and applaud the writer for resisting the urge to end with something over-dramatic. It was a poised, thought-provoking conclusion, which left me feeling very satisfied.

A big thumbs up from me, I'll be looking out for more stuff from this author. View all 5 comments. Jun 02, Bethany Godwin rated it liked it. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It has an excellent premise and is written very well, but I found myself bogged down by extraneous story lines and, well, too much writing.

PLUS the spirit is never expelled! Eleanor, Richard, and Zoe cut the "clearing" short and simply move out. That was extremely dissatisfying. We get plenty of Eleanor's headaches and vom I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. I got the impression that the problem didn't originate with Emily but was there before, yet there's really nothing about that.

The second biggest issue is how I didn't like any of them and I wanted someone to get his or her act together. I hated how transient Zoe was-- how she was sort of floating through life, whether it be friendships, relationships, or job. Her head space was totally evident in the condition of her apartment which honestly grossed me out. Are people really that disgusting? Not to mention Richard being a total creeper and nosing around her personal space--which, let's be fair here, she did her fair share of snooping.

Note to self: Never have or be a lodger. I admit to being intrigued in the beginning about what's going on with her and Laura and her and Rob, but that got old quick due to Murray-Browne's annoying habit of sending the reader into the past for unending paragraphs.

Those Back to the Future moments may not have been so bad if they weren't sort of rambling. I felt like the characters' instability in the present was equalled in the past and eventually I started skimming until I got to parts dealing with the house's haunting. Let's look at Eleanor and Richard now. Their relationship is an enigma. They didn't even like or make an impression in Richard's case each other in the beginning, and, honestly, I'm still confused as to how they even grew on each other enough to start a relationship.

Add to that the fact that Richard tired of Eleanor not long into their relationship, I just don't get it. There is no love there, people, which irks me to no end. Richard, admittedly, has no idea what he wants to do and is wasting his time, our time, and their money on an MA he never finishes-- ultimately ending up a bum or part time stay-at-home dad, whichever you prefer who's like a child who doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up.

He does, however, have a strange obsession with fixing up a haunted house he can barely afford in the first place. And Eleanor? I thought she had a job at a publishing house. Her musings into the past are about as interesting as watching paint dry because they are essentially her bemoaning her lackluster life. I think Murray-Browne's money maker was in the paranormal, but she spent way to much time on the characters' personal lives to achieve success.

View 1 comment. Aug 22, Laura rated it really liked it. One successful element to the story is the characters, and how well developed they are. Though many aspects of their personalities got on my nerves, I did feel for them - especially Eleanor - as when things started getting weird!

The story is actually fairly slow paced but has plenty of really strange, unsettling moments that created a truly spooky atmosphere. The Upstairs Room is a slow burner but one which really drew me in and focuses on character development as much as any thrills or creepiness. A great read! Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing a copy of this novel on which I chose to write and honest and unbiased review.

More book reviews on www. Jul 16, Kirsty rated it really liked it Shelves: kindle , july The Upstairs Room felt like rather a good book to read when I felt unwell, pulling me in as it did from the beginning.

It was not as dark as I had anticipated, but is undoubtedly well structured. The character studies which Murray-Browne writes are subtle at first, and then deepen and become more complex as the novel progresses. The Upstairs Room was not quite the book which I was expecting, but it is a compelling page turner nonetheless. It should be said from the start that this book suffers from something of a misleading blurb. The writing is engaging and tangible, and there were some moments that had this lover of ghost stories pulling the covers a little higher at night.

Rosie was sitting upright in bed, shaking and crying uncontrollably. Eleanor reached out to her and Rosie recoiled. She had an unfathomable expression of pure terror; she looked straight past Eleanor, staring at something whic It should be said from the start that this book suffers from something of a misleading blurb. She had an unfathomable expression of pure terror; she looked straight past Eleanor, staring at something which seemed to horrify her.

Eleanor looked round instinctively but the wall behind her was blank. Zoe woke up to find she had a creature sitting on her chest. It was some kind of large bird, but it had human arms where its legs should have been, splayed-out palms instead of feet.

The palms were pressing, increasingly hard, on her chest. She tried to scream and throw it off, but it was no good, she was trapped. She could see the girl sitting in the corner of the room, watching. The pressure intensified. The rest of the book is about relationships and dreams, with recurring themes of unbalanced love, settling, and restrictions with regards to relationships, and with artistic folk popping up left, right, and center.

The rest of this review can be found HERE! Oct 30, Imi rated it really liked it Shelves: contemporary , kindle , mystery , paranormal , top-reads , fiction , british , she-writes , illness-and-disability , read-in I picked this up hoping for a good haunted house story, and I kept reading for what turned out to be an tense and nuanced domestic drama.

Not what I was expecting in the slightest, but all the better for it. Imagine a ghost story, if the "ghosts" are modern day anxieties as a twenty-or-thirty something: the housing crisis, the expense of living in London, providing for a family, making a house "yours", settling with someone or somewhere, finding yourself or your purpose Eleanor and Richard are I picked this up hoping for a good haunted house story, and I kept reading for what turned out to be an tense and nuanced domestic drama.

Eleanor and Richard are a thity-something married couple with two young daughters. They buy a Victorian terrace in London, falling apart and in need of some TLC, which they hope to transform into their dream home, all the while adding to its value. The purchase, however, stretches their finances to the limit, leading to them taking a lodger, twenty-something Zoe.

Strange happenings and unfortunate events mean that none of the residents feel immediately comfortable in their new home. Both Eleanor and Zoe begin to suffer from strange symptoms, and we see, although they never discuss their suspicions with each other, that both begin to believe the suspect the house of being behind it all; the house seemingly drains their energy, causes Eleanor's weakness and intolerable headaches, and Zoe is terrified by her night terrors.

I found the course of Eleanor's unexplained illness particularly chilling. I myself have an invisible illness and I found Murray-Browne's descriptions of Eleanor's desperate attempts to keep pushing forward, despite how awful she was feeling, very true to life.

Not that I've ever believed my illness to be caused by an unfriendly ghost or a building's "bad energy", but other than that I could see many parallels between Eleanor's and my own past experiences, and that certainly heightened this part of the novel's emotional impact for me. In terms of the paranormal element, I loved how subtle the execution was. I am coming to realise that these are my favourite kind of "ghost" stories, where the author carefully treads the line between the supernatural and the utterly ordinary, the real and the possibly unreal.

It's what I loved so much about The Little Stranger , another measured and impeccably ambiguous ghost story I read earlier in the year, although of course set in an entirely different time and place to this one. I can certainly see the similarities to Murray-Browne's work though, especially in how she leaves the reader guessing, never quite sure if there is a rational explanation, that the ghost is a mere figure of the imagination and of the anxieties wrecking the minds of the house's inhabitants This book's ideal reader would also need to be interested in domestic family and romantic dramas, as that is the focus of the majority of the plot.

All three of the main characters are fairly unlikable and make one questionable decision after the next, but I loved how fleshed out and deep their backstories were. This is more a book for those who enjoy character studies, than those who are after a plot-driven and twisty paranormal mystery.

Personally, I loved it, and it was probably one of my favourite surprises of the year. Jun 22, Thebooktrail rated it liked it Shelves: novel-set-in-london. For people of a nervous disposition or like me who read this the very weekend when you go to see a friend who's renovating a house I used to write on the walls as a child, there was even some scribbles of the house I went to visit recently.

So you can imagine my horror at reading this book! I was suitably chilled and thrilled and freaked out. The entire novel is set up like a normal house move, a lodger, and a house that seems to dislike the new people. Eleanor is the one For people of a nervous disposition or like me who read this the very weekend when you go to see a friend who's renovating a house Eleanor is the one to get to the truth of the matter - her good for nothing husband is too busy wanting to get busy with the lodger.

Never mind his poor wife going out of her mind. This worked really well for me as the set up was brilliant but the characters didn't quite fit if that makes sense. Eleanor didn't seem with it and was a bit too keen to have sex when she thought something from the afterlife might be watching! The house was the main character for me and that chilled me to the core.

It reminded me a bit of the movie The Skeleton Key as the set up with that room Jeepers creepers. View all 3 comments. Jun 08, Roman Clodia rated it really liked it.

I have to confess that I'm rubbish at scary books and films as I scare easily! It's taken me 5 days to read this not because it's dull but because a couple of scenes freaked me out to the extent that I've only been reading this on the bus or when I haven't been alone at home.

Horror aficionados may well laugh What I liked about this is the slow build-up of eerie feelings, and the ambiguity that Murray-Browne keeps going right to the end.

Anyone wanting gore, or explicit horrors may well find I have to confess that I'm rubbish at scary books and films as I scare easily!

Anyone wanting gore, or explicit horrors may well find this disappointing - it's more akin to James' The Turn of the Screw without the literary style than Stephen King What isn't quite so successful are the unnecessarily-extended back stories - we just don't need to know everything about our married couple from when they were students at Oxford.

All the same, M-B keeps her narrative bubbling over nicely with deranged writings on the walls, misplaced objects and that perennial of the genre, sinister children. Jun 09, Eva rated it liked it. But there are strange things afoot. Eleanor thinks the house is making her ill. And her daughter has gone from a little angel to a temper tantrum throwing little devil. I must say, I have some serious mixed feelings about The Upst 2. I must say, I have some serious mixed feelings about The Upstairs Room but the overwhelming one would probably be slight disappointment.

While the chapters about the house were great, there were flashback chapters about life for the inhabitants before they moved into this house and they completely ruined the flow of the story. In an odd sort of way, it almost felt as if they were written by someone else entirely. There was way too much focus on past and present relationships.

At about the halfway mark, I pretty much stopped caring about them altogether. What kept me reading was the mystery surrounding the upstairs room but there were no answers or explanations as to the why, how, or what and none of it was in any way creepy enough. Just when I thought things might finally get interesting and pick up, things fell flat. I was obviously expecting something entirely different from this story than what I got and this book was just not for me.

Jun 09, Aaron Nash rated it did not like it. I seriously cant seem to DNF a book, regardless of how bad it is. OCD, hey ho. The problem with this book is that nothing happens at all. It starts with a family moving into a house and renting out the basement room to a lodger.

You get the familiar horror tropes: the kids playing up acting posessed, the house making the mother feel ill, things being moved about etc etc. In the end it never explains at all why the house is haunted, what is causing these things. The ending is so anti-climatic that it made me angry and had i been reading a hard copy i would have launched it across the room.

Like i say nothing happens. You have a lot of build up that leads to sweet fuck all. As for isobel the lodger. A completely pointless character. She brings absolutely nothing to the story at all apart from her being in a confused relationship and unsure of what she wants in life. Grrrr im angry. What a waste of my time. View 2 comments. May 21, i. A Victorian townhouse, a lovely couple with two wonderful children and a young lodger are the ingredients for one of the most unnerving and disturbing novels I have read this year.

Eleanor and Richard are a nice couple who decide to buy a house in one of the most exclusive areas of London; in order to help with the expenses they rent the basement to Zoe, a young and lively girl. What makes the plot stand out is the combination of modern day life events and the disturbing presence of something or A Victorian townhouse, a lovely couple with two wonderful children and a young lodger are the ingredients for one of the most unnerving and disturbing novels I have read this year.

What makes the plot stand out is the combination of modern day life events and the disturbing presence of something or someone in the upstairs room of the house. This townhouse slowly starts to affect the lives of all the characters in different and frightening ways: illness, strange accidents, erratic behaviour Kate Murray-Browne has written a psychological terror novel that will appeal to many adult readers and fans of the genre and will certainly make you think twice before buying an old house without checking who or what lived there before.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. Jul 17, Joanne Robertson rated it liked it. This is a darkly claustrophobic and atmospheric modern chiller that made me feel very uncomfortable whilst reading it.

The state of the housing market is at the heart of this gothic style ghost story. Book Buzz Home. The Upstairs Room. Johanna Reiss. First published: Pages: Sets: 1. Total copies: Check Availability.