I enjoyed THE HOUSE UPTOWN, a quick coming of age story about a young girl, Ava, navigating loss and her relationship with Lane, her grandmother. I was expecting a more suspenseful, thriller-type read, but this was a slow burn and felt more like literary fiction. The characters were compelling, I enjoyed the New Orleans setting and really loved Ginsburg's writing. Overall, a good story with an ending that left me wanting a bit more. Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC, received in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars - rounded up for rating

I went into this expecting a thriller, but I feel like this would fall more in the category of literary fiction. Which definitely isn’t a bad thing, so that’s just good to know before starting to adjust expectations. THE HOUSE UPTOWN was still a really engrossing read even though it wasn’t quite what I anticipated. We meet Lane, a young girl that is forced to live with a grandmother she has never met after her mother’s death. Not only does she need to navigate grieving the loss of her mother, but she also needs to figure out her place in her new home.

I couldn’t imagine being 14 and not only losing my parent but then having my entire life turned upside down and having to move in with a complete stranger. I really enjoyed the writing and want to check out this author’s other books – I liked seeing the relationship between Ava and her grandmother progress. I felt like there were a couple things that seemed rushed in the end, but overall it was a very moving story.

Thank you so much to Marlena Bittner from Flatiron Books for sending me the NetGalley and a finished copy of Melissa Ginsburg’s latest book The House Uptown and for asking me to take part in the blog tour!

Published: March 16, 2021.

The House Uptown tells the tragic and emotional story of Ava, a fourteen-year-old girl from Iowa, who is sent to live with her grandmother, Lane, in New Orleans after her mother’s sudden passing. Upon her arrival, Ava quickly realizes that her new life will not be anything close to what she knew before.

Lane, although a brilliant and phenomenal artist, is not fully present mentally and—without it being explicitly stated—it is clear that she suffers from Alzheimer’s or Dementia. As such, Lane struggles to take care of herself and spends her days painting and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol supplied to her through her assistant Oliver (who struggles with substance abuse himself). This is made worse when Ava’s arrival forces Lane to confront the painful memories she has of her now dead daughter. Because of this, aside from Oliver’s “help,” Ava is left unsupervised, without structure, and has to find a way to care for the household and her grandmother by herself.

Ava, Lane, and Oliver seem to be making the most of the situation and balancing their new dynamic until one day when Lane accidentally lets a major secret from her past slip, causing an avalanche of events to ensue that none of them could have ever prepared for.

MY THOUGHTS:

Overall this was a good book and I really enjoyed it! It’s a short and quick read, but the story itself is more of a slow burn with some added mystery and suspenseful elements to it. The prologue starts the book off with a bang (which I won’t give any details on!) and you’re left wondering where the story will go from there… right up until the final pages! I really loved that I could not figure out where the story was headed. I do, however, wish that there had been more closure at the end for all of the characters.

Speaking of which, I really enjoyed the characters. Lane is such a complex and interesting character… her memory lapses and confusion were so sad but also so believable, and it was so interesting to see inside parts of her mind and to see how she makes sense of things. Lane is simply a heartbroken mother over her estranged relationship with her now-dead daughter… and the arrival of Ava dredges up so many old and painful memories for her. Ava, on the other hand, was so relatable to me on so many different levels. She brought me back to my fourteen-year-old self. Her life has been completely flipped upside down with the death of her mother and she’s left to try and figure out how to make the most of it and her new situation. I just wanted to hug her through the pages to try to make things better for her. Now for Oliver… I liked his character the least of the three, just because he made me so angry with his decisions, and you’ll see why when you read the book.

https://rebekahreads.ca/the-house-uptown-by-melissa-ginsburg/

“The choices people make”

Oh My Goodness!

How could a book so relatively short in length, with just a handful of key characters, be packed so full of sadness?

Not the kind of sadness which causes great heart wrenching sobs, but the kind of sorrow that comes from deep within, which has the tears silently but inexorably rolling down your cheeks like an unchecked river.

There are two clearly separated strands to this dual timeline saga, which are cleverly blended and interwoven at several different stages in the storyline, until they connect in a climax which left me breathless, satisfied with the outcome, yet not fully sated, as I am a reader who craves final closure before I turn the last page of the book.

Whilst the whole experience wouldn’t have been as richly complete without the background mystery story, this was for me, a book almost exclusively driven by its characters, with their individual idiosyncrasies and insecurities, their relationships and interactions with each other, their eventual bonding together, and their ultimate, devastating final parting chapter, from which there was no return.

What makes reading so wonderful for me, is that with every book I read, I look forward to being taken on a unique journey, and this story definitely opens the floodgates to those individual experiences. Beautifully structured, wonderfully textured and multi-layered, author Melissa Ginsburg held me in the palm of her hand from beginning to end, with her consummate story building skills and her authoritative and confidently written artistic and lyrical prose.

Compellingly descriptive and observational narrative is the glue which holds the storyline together, offering a real and tangible sense of time and place. I could imagine myself transported to Lane’s house, where family heirlooms and treasures have been consigned to cupboards, as almost every available inch of space has been transformed into a single giant art studio, with the odour of paints and thinners vying for any available oxygen, with the aroma of coffee and pipes of ‘pot’. On down into New Orleans itself, where the ravages of Hurricane Katrina are still only barely concealed in many areas, yet the lovely waterside views compete with some great sounding eating establishments, where those succulent smells and tastes almost leap off the page at me, leaving me licking my lips and consoling my rumbling tummy!

Told with real heart, intuitive empathy, social perception and touching passion, the rich dialogue and interactions between the characters, bring the pages to life. The lies and secrets so well hidden as to almost be forgotten by a generation, yet so astutely visible to the naive eye and intuition of the young. The slowly evolving relationship between grandmother and granddaughter, so long estranged, thrust together, yet with so little time to explore and evolve, before the cruel hand of fate wrests control from their grasp. The detached fragility of the mind, which has the power to leave the body so vulnerable and weak. All these emotions and feelings snatched away and destroyed by the avarice and greed of one individual, who sets off a chain of events they have no power to stop, even as they are seeking atonement for their indiscretions. A complex character cast which on the whole, I found it quite difficult to engage with, despite the fact that they were all beautifully and authentically drawn and defined. maybe it was because of the personal baggage they were all weighed down with, which because open dialogue and synergy between them wasn’t great, they were all shouldering alone and in lonely solitude, as they each searched for that illusive sense of belonging and being loved.

Orphaned at 14 after her mother’s sudden death, Ava is sent to live with her only surviving relative: her grandmother, whom Ava only met once, many years earlier. Lane lives in New Orleans, where she works as an artist; Ava grew up in Iowa, and knows very little about this talented but troubled woman. For instance, what caused the estrangement between Lane and her daughter?

Ava arrives in New Orleans by train, but no one meets her at the station. The reader learns that the girl is resourceful enough to figure out how to get to her grandmother’s house (she takes a cab), which is good, because living with Lane is not exactly going to provide her with a structured environment.

Lane spends her days smoking pot (procured by her assistant, Oliver), swigging iced coffee and working on her art. However, she has bigger issues than just being an absentminded artist; she appears to be suffering from dementia, and frequently forgets who Ava is (going so far as to point a gun at her at one point, convinced the girl is an intruder) or believes her to be Louise, her late daughter. Without adult supervision, Ava spends her days exploring the city, a perplexing place where “plastic beads hung in the branches of trees and on telephone wires,” where street musicians “sang songs about singing songs in New Orleans—Ava felt lost in this strange place so enamored with itself.”

The novel’s prologue (set two decades earlier) hints at a dark secret involving Bert, Lane’s former lover, and his son Artie, who is now running for his dad’s old seat on the City Council. There is a crime and a cover-up, but I’m not sure I would classify The House Uptown as a mystery or a thriller; it’s more of a character study, as we follow Lane, Ava and Oliver in alternating chapters (with occasional drop-ins from Artie). I’ve never experienced New Orleans’ beguiling atmosphere in person, but visiting it through Melissa Ginsburg’s well-crafted tale was a pleasure.

I enjoyed this one but didn’t feel it was as much a suspense as a general fiction. It had light touches but not as much suspense as most suspense novels I read. That said overall I’d recommend it to anyone. It was certainly enjoyable as I mentioned.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I loved this book!

I live in Denver, but was raised in Baton Rouge. This story is set in New Orleans, so the nuances of Louisiana living are nostalgic, so that does lend to how much I liked it- but, I loved the writing, the mood and the characters so much! ✨
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It’s about a 14 year old girl named Ava. She lives with her single mother in Iowa. Her mother dies and the only family she has is a grandmother in Louisiana, so she is sent there.

Her mother and grandmother had been estranged for many years, so Ava doesn’t know her.

Her grandmother does not greet Ava with open arms. She is clearly suffering from dementia, she’s cranky and very eccentric. She also smokes pot and drinks whiskey all day.

Ava is attempting to navigate this new reality. ✨
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This has been categorized as suspense, thriller, coming-of-age. While it has those elements, I would just call it General Fiction Novel. There is only a small part that is suspenseful.

I will also say that I wanted more from the ending. For my friends that like their bow-endings, this might not be for you. The ending is open, left to inference and interpretation. I was sad when it was over and wanted to know more. But, I still loved it 💕