The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs

August 12, 2019
This taut graphic novella builds psychological horror brick by brick in an elegantly drawn haunted-house tale. Thomas and Emma, a young couple, move to a sprawling home in the countryside to start a family. But living in the middle of nowhere with a colicky, constantly wailing baby begins to fray Emma’s nerves. Soon she’s hearing strange sounds in the attic and noticing sinister changes in her increasingly cold husband as the demands of motherhood drag her down into madness. With suffused paranoia and dread amid domestic placidity suggestive of Shirley Jackson, the story tackles postpartum depression, maternal isolation, trauma, and the all-too-common parental anxiety that Emma expresses by asking, “What if some women were never meant to be mothers, and it takes a baby to find out?” Loup’s carefully observed black-and-white art, fine-lined with gray ink washes for shading, gives the narrative a faintly antiquated feel that’s just off-kilter enough to suggest a subtle wrongness to the house, the grounds, and the frantic human figures trapped within as the baby shrieks. Brief but effective, this unnerving work digs into the ordinary and extraordinary horrors of parenting. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Company Literary Mgmt.

October 11, 2019

Emma is having the time of her life. Events are unfolding like a beautiful dream, with a newly purchased house in the country, a loving husband, Thomas, and a baby on the way. When the happy day arrives, however, circumstances begin to whittle her idylls away one by one. The newborn cries nonstop, so much so that there is no activity that frees Emma from the omnipresent sound. Perhaps even more troubling is the day that Thomas goes upstairs to the attic, after which Emma hears strange sounds that frighten her. As she rushes upstairs, Thomas meets her on the stairs and is strangely subdued and distant. She senses that something is amiss with her partner, and believes she can see misshapen undulating shapes where her husband's head should be. Could this explain why the baby never rests, because the terrorized tot knows that her father is no longer human? VERDICT Sporting elusive black-and-white art that utilizes the power of the comic form to heighten the emotional resonance of the story, Loup (Bad Boyfriends) creates a strikingly literary horror by externalizing and incarnating the miasma of postpartum depression. A solid addition for adult graphic novel collections.--Douglas Rednour, Georgia State Univ. Libs., Atlanta

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