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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Cabell County Public Library | 741.5 LOU | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
After moving into a new home and giving birth to her first child, a woman worries that a supernatural force is haunting her child's nursery, and has corrupted her husband into a creature intent on harming them both.
Emma is excited to start a family in her new home, but after her child's birth she finds her world turning upside-down. The infant cries like it's scared of something, or someone, and Emma's sleepless nights quickly drive a wedge between her and her husband, who seems uncharacteristically detached. When Emma begins to see strange things in the house, the line between reality and fantasy blurs and her grasp of what's real and what's not becomes even more clouded. Is something unnatural haunting the nursery? And what if it also affected her husband, who ventured up into the attic when they first arrived...
Inspired by the works of Shirley Jackson and Ira Levin, Celine Loup's The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs weaves a tale of horror and suspense that captures the isolation of postpartum depression, while exploring the very real fears associated with new motherhood.
For Mature Readers.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This taut graphic novella builds psychological horror brick by brick in an elegantly drawn haunted-house tale. Thomas and Emma, a young couple, move to a sprawling home in the countryside to start a family. But living in the middle of nowhere with a colicky, constantly wailing baby begins to fray Emma's nerves. Soon she's hearing strange sounds in the attic and noticing sinister changes in her increasingly cold husband as the demands of motherhood drag her down into madness. With suffused paranoia and dread amid domestic placidity suggestive of Shirley Jackson, the story tackles postpartum depression, maternal isolation, trauma, and the all-too-common parental anxiety that Emma expresses by asking, "What if some women were never meant to be mothers, and it takes a baby to find out?" Loup's carefully observed black-and-white art, fine-lined with gray ink washes for shading, gives the narrative a faintly antiquated feel that's just off-kilter enough to suggest a subtle wrongness to the house, the grounds, and the frantic human figures trapped within as the baby shrieks. Brief but effective, this unnerving work digs into the ordinary and extraordinary horrors of parenting. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Company Literary Mgmt. (Sept.)
Booklist Review
Emma and Thomas are an expectant couple who have just moved to a beautiful historic house in the countryside. Soon after their arrival, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Roslin. In the process of moving in, they discover the door to the attic is padlocked, and Thomas goes up to break the lock. When he comes down the stairs, Emma begins to suspect he is an altogether different man he's unusually distant, especially in caring for their inconsolable infant. Sounds, especially Roslin's interminable wails, play an integral part in the story, with thick scrawled onomatopoeia crowding out images in the shadowy, scratchy-lined artwork. Emma's palpable pain is evident in the evocative, dusky art, and her anxiety and helplessness are articulated in her therapy visits. The story is dark both visually and tonally, and readers will feel the unease that might accompany an episode of The Twilight Zone. Any parent can sympathize immensely with a struggling new mother, though this also has a macabre flavor that could appeal to fans of literary-tinged body horror.--Suzanne Temple Copyright 2010 Booklist
