The Room Upstairs

Description

Ever since they built the road through her family's farm, separating the big yellow house from the pastures of Sybil's youth, nothing has been the same. At least the house remains, full of her memories, which wander through the rooms like ghosts. When Jess moves to America to marry Laurie in a whirlwind romance, she soon learns that his Grandmother and her creaky old house come with him. Stubborn, ailing and no longer able to look after herself, Sybil must rely on this British girl who has come to steal her beloved grandson from her. The echoing spectres of dead loved ones follow Sybil as she travels farther along the road to senility, but will those same echoes drive Jess towards madness? In Sybil, Monica Dickens has produced a character rich in determination, dark humour, and resilience. First published in 1966, The Room Upstairs is a portrait of a woman's fight with time, who refuses to be forgotten, and who refuses to forget.

Great grand daughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world she was brought up in - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge - Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands in 1939. Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but the majority of writing continued to be set in Britain. Her book of 1953, No More Meadows, reflected her work with the NSPCC and she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals, and to some extent children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.