A Buzzfeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year âą A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year
""A massively entertaining and slyly enlightening story nestled inside another story like a ghost within its host."" âKathleen Rooney, author of Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
In this provocative meditation on new motherhoodâShirley Jackson meets The Awakeningâa postpartum womanâs psychological unraveling becomes intertwined with the ghostly appearance of childrenâs book writer Margaret Wise Brown.
Thereâs 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, sheâs also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertationâa thesis on mid-century childrenâs literature.
Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic childrenâs book writer Margaret Wise Brownâauthor of the beloved classic Goodnight Moonâwhose 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 struggleâand until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.
Using Meganâs postpartum haunting as a powerful metaphor for a womanâs fraught relationship with her body and mind, Julia Fine once again delivers an imaginative and âbarely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness, and hereditary inheritancesâ (Washington Post).
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.