The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

In most mystery stories, the past events are know. Well, by most people at least. And those who don’t know them can easily find them out from other people, to piece together the story and get a clear, holistic idea of what happened. But what if you have absolutely no idea about what happened in past events and what if you have absolutely no leads of potential people to give you information? But even worse, what if you’re not the detective just trying to solve a case unrelated to you? What if you need to know the past just to discover who you are yourself? We always take the past for granted and tell ourselves to forget about it and move to the future. But actually a sense of belonging, and knowing who our family are, is really crucial for humans, so that we feel safe, secure and supported. Sometimes you can’t move to the future if you never knew where your starting point in life was, or who else might be out there that has a strong connection to you. In this story we follow the journey of Libby, a young woman who’s life, apart from being adopted when she was a baby, has been relatively normal, until now that she discovers she has inherited a fortune in the form of a huge London Town house, left to her by her birth family. Until the age of 25, she had no idea that this house and fortune existed and now she finally has a chance of uncovering just who and where her original family might be. No one knows anything about the people who last lived in the house, so Libby must use clues from the house itself to help her. The house has not been touched since it was abandoned 25 years prior to now and its walls hold all the dark secrets of the people who lived there. Strange garments and other obscure things left behind, give Libby a starting point to go from and they reveal that some extremely hostile, inhumane and outright bazaar events occurred in that house. She must continue to investigate further though, if she is ever going to find her original family members, even if it means putting herself in danger to do so. The author, Lisa Jewell, doesn’t just show us the story from the past unravelling from Libby’s perspective, but also from the perspective of Henry, a boy from the past, who lived in the mysterious house. From him, we learn about how the lives of a pretty standard family got turned completely upside down gradually over the course of a few years, and then eventually went completely to ruin. It all began when his parents started having money troubles and decided that the solution was to allow another family to stay with them for a while. Henry and his sister were forced to adapt to this new way of living, forever hoping that the money troubles would melt away and this other family would soon vanish from their lives forever. But as time goes on, Henry soon realised that this family, consisting of a boy around Henry’s age, his father and his mother, were there to stay. And, not only were they there to stay, but the father intended to make significant changes to the way Henry’s own family was living and to make himself the ruler of the whole household. These changes eventually lead to horrific acts being imposed by him upon the children and women of the household, including various punishments, rape and severe manipulation. Henry’s parents were so sucked into this new cultish way of life that he couldn’t depend on them to get him and his sister away from this terrible life. The children soon had to fend, and fight, for themselves. This story is so cleverly written, that the reader experiences these significant changes to Henry’s way of life just as he does and we even feel his own impending sense of doom when he realises the gravity of the situation that he has to live in. We empathise with him as his normal life slowly turns into a fight for survival and we fight alongside him as he struggles to get himself and his little sister out of this terrible situation. With Henry’s tale of the past unfolding and Libby’s quest for the truth using clues left in the house 25 years ago, the reader is able to piece together what happened after the abandonment of the house, where the family members are now and their relation to Libby. The readers main questions, such as ‘why was the house abandoned? What happened in the house on the night of the abandonment? Did the children manage to escape? If so, where are the children now and how have they been living for the past 25 years and, most interestingly, what is their relation to Libby (who was just a baby at the time)?’, are all answered by the reader themselves as they put 2 and 2 together with information from the past and new findings from the present. The author is very successful at completely sucking the reader into the lives, past and present, of these characters and, also, at making the reader appreciate how fragile life really is and just how drastically it can change when we become heavily influenced by strong authoritative figures. When you are exposed to strong opinions 24/7, you yourself may start to doubt your principles and change your way of life accordingly, but these changes may certainly not be for the better.