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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 TimesIn 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).
About the author
Julia Fine is the author of the critically acclaimed debut What Should Be Wild, which was short-listed for both the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction. She teaches writing in Chicago, Illinois where she lives with her husband and children.
Summary
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).
Additional text
“Chills. I found this book about a haunting to be haunting — unsettling, nerve-racking, worrisome, strange. I fretted over the characters when I wasn’t reading it and ached for them when I was. Loved it so very much.”
