The Upstairs House

November 2, 2020
Fine (What Should Be Wild) examines a new mother’s unraveling in her eerie sophomore outing. Eight days after stalled English PhD candidate Megan Weiler gives birth to her first daughter, Clara, Megan discovers a turquoise door in the stairwell above their apartment. Behind it she finds a woman who, upon asked what she’s doing, says she’s “building a house for Michael.” While researching for her dissertation on children’s literature amid her postpartum delirium, Megan realizes the woman resembles Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, who died in 1952, and decides she must be Margaret’s ghost, and the house she is building is for her lover, poet Michael Strange (born Blanche Oelrichs). Interstitial chapters comprise chapters of Megan’s thesis, in which she casts Margaret and Michael’s lesbian relationship as a tempestuous, borderline-abusive affair beginning in the 1940s. As the ghosts of Margaret and Michael disturb Clara, Megan flees with Clara to a cabin in Wisconsin, but even there, she can’t shake the grip of the ghosts, and her world becomes more claustrophobic. Fine keeps the high concept under control as the book hurtles toward a disturbing conclusion. This white-knuckle depiction of the essential scariness of new motherhood will captivate readers. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.

January 1, 2021
In this inventive, visceral novel, Fine (What Should Be Wild, 2018) creates a dark fairy tale about a woman whose career plans are sidelined by pregnancy and the birth of her daughter. Pre-pregnancy, Megan was completing her dissertation on children's book author Margaret Wise Brown of Goodnight Moon fame. Now her motherly instincts are muddled, and she's unable to write. She's literally losing herself. The upstairs tenant denies making construction noises that disturb Megan but which her husband and sister don't seem to hear. Then she discovers an odd door in the stairwell. Inside she finds the presumably deceased Margaret Wise Brown, building a home for her lover, Michael Strange. Soon, mother and daughter are beset by ominous occurrences and become entangled in a dangerous duel between Brown and Strange. Snippets of Megan's dissertation offer insights into Brown and Strange's relationship. Word sketches often impart the feeling of the bold, spare illustrations of Brown's classics. Within this enveloping story of harrowing hallucinations, Fine depicts the devastation of postpartum depression, all too often shrouded in shame and blame, and offers hope.

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