Review: THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS, Lisa Jewell

• this edition published by century 2019
• ISBN 978-1-780-899206
• 446 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Booktopia)

In a large house in London’s fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.

In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.

They’ve been dead for several days.

Who has been looking after the baby?

And where did they go?

Two entangled families.
A house with the darkest of secrets.

My Take

One of the incredible things about this book is the variety of narrators.

First of all, in the first person, someone whose identity we eventually come to surmise, more by a process of elimination.
Then the story of Libby, the baby who has now turned 25, and learns that she has inherited a mansion in Chelsea, that has lain empty for nearly her whole life.
Then Lucy's story. At first we are not sure who Lucy is, but clearly she is important.
And then Miller Roe, a journalist who recently wrote an article about the events that occurred in the mansion in Chelsea.

At first the reader has to deduce the narrator from clues given in the context, but eventually recognition of who has taken over the story becomes automatic.

The threads of the narration weave together, the story bubbles along, and we learn finally the truth of what happened in 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read
4.4, THEN SHE WAS GONE
4.6, I FOUND YOU  

review: I FOUND YOU, Lisa Jewell

• this edition published by Penguin Random House UK in 2016
• ISBN 978-1-78-089362-4
• 448 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (publisher)

Two women. Twenty years of secrets. And a man who doesn't remember anything.
Or does he?

Everyone has secrets. What if you can't remember yours?
'How long have you been sitting out here?'
'I got here yesterday.'
'Where did you come from?'
'I have no idea.'

Lily has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one.

Alice finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement, she invites him into her home.

But who is he, and how can she trust a man who has lost his memory?

My take

Lily's new husband doesn't come home and she can't find him. Almost simultaneously Alice finds a man who doesn't know who he is. Are they the same man?

The novel works its way through these plot strands and we understand that they are edging closer and closer towards each other. Much of the book describes events from 22 years earlier but its connection to either of these more contemporary plots is not clear until the latter half of the book.

I so enjoyed my first book by Lisa Jewell that I determined to read another, and I've enjoyed this one too. She is an excellent storyteller and her style is very readable.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read
4.4, THEN SHE WAS GONE

Review: THEN SHE WAS GONE, Lisa Jewell

• this edition published 2017 by Century (Random House)
• ISBN 978-1-78-089542-7
• 424 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (publisher)

She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl.
She had her whole life ahead of her.
And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

Ten years on, Laurel has never given up hope of finding Ellie. And then she meets a charming and charismatic stranger who sweeps her off her feet.

But what really takes her breath away is when she meets his nine-year-old daughter.

Because his daughter is the image of Ellie.

Now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What really happened to Ellie? And who still has secrets to hide?

My take

Ellie disappeared on her way to the library. No CCTV to help, house to house searches revealed nothing. The police thought she had run away, and eventually the discovery of her bag with some clothes seemed to confirm that. Four years after her disappearance someone burgled the house, as if Ellie had come back to retrieve some belongings.

In the aftermath of Ellie's disappearance Laurel's marriage collapsed, her brother and sister left home, and Laurel's husband Paul found a new woman.

I did have some doubts about the credibility of parts of the plot but that did not prevent me from either enjoying or finishing the book.

Lisa Jewell really is an author that I read need to read more books by.

My rating: 4.4

About the author

I've been here in one form or another for A Very Long Time Indeed.

My first book, Ralph's Party, came out in 1998, when I was still a young person and when some of you may not yet have been born. Since then I have written and published another fourteen books, from the 'curry and flatmates' novels of the nineties and noughties like Thirtynothing, One Hit Wonder, A Friend of the Family and Vince & Joy, to more serious 'themed' novels like After The Party (marriage), The Making of Us (sperm donation) and The House We Grew Up In (hoarding) to my more recent domestic thrillers, like The Third Wife, The Girls, I Found You and Then She Was Gone.

I live in London with my husband, two daughters, two hairy cats, two nervous guinea pigs and a very lovely auburn dog. I write every day, a minimum of one thousand words, in a cafe, with no access to the internet, in two to three hour sessions. It's a very good life.