The House Uptown, Melissa Ginsburg
The House Uptown, Melissa Ginsburg
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The House Uptown
A Novel

Author: Melissa Ginsburg

Narrator: Emily Shaffer

Unabridged: 7 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/16/2021


Synopsis

Melissa Ginsburg's The House Uptown is an emotional coming-of-age novel about a young girl who goes to live with her eccentric grandmother in New Orleans after the death of her mother.

Ava, fourteen years old and totally on her own, has still not fully processed her mother’s death when she finds herself on a train heading to New Orleans, to stay with Lane, the grandmother she barely remembers.

Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and painting, which has been her singular focus for years. Her grip on reality is shaky at best, but her work provides a comfort.

Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, whom she was estranged from before her death. Now her presence is dredging up painful and disturbing memories, which forces Lane to retreat even further into her own mind. As Ava and Lane attempt to find their way and form a bond, the oppressive heat and history of New Orleans bears down on them, forcing a reckoning neither of them are ready for.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

"Ginsburg's brilliance is on full display in The House Uptown. By giving us these layered, complicated characters, all suffering from previous traumas, Ginsburg reveals how the past keeps reaching toward us, and what we'll do to stay out of its reach. It's a book that breaks you down, even though you can't put it down." - Kevin Wilson, NYT bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

About Melissa Ginsburg

Melissa Ginsburg was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of the novel, Sunset City, and the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on February 04, 2021

One of the things I loved most about this book is I was never quite sure about the endgame until literally the last few pages. It’s a great fiction story with some mystery and suspense elements. Ava is fourteen years old and her mother passed away recently. She is sent to stay with her grandmother,......more

Goodreads review by Julie (JuJu) on February 03, 2021

This was a tragic and emotional tale, but didn’t come off as a coming-of-age story...nor a thriller, but I still enjoyed it. It brought tears to my eyes, as I read about Ava’s sad journey, after her mother dies suddenly! This poor girl! I wanted to reach into the pages and hug her. When Ava is sent......more

Goodreads review by JaymeO on April 28, 2021

This book was a complete and utter disappointment for me. I feel like I just wasted almost eight hours of my life and learned absolutely nothing. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by a slow reading robotic voice. Just painful. This very, very, slow burn “thriller” is sad, depressing and in......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on January 05, 2021

The cover of this says "thriller" and I was expecting a crime novel because I was a huge fan of Ginsburg's last, excellent one SUNSET CITY. But the summary is correct on this one, it isn't really a thriller. It's barely a crime novel, at best the crime is the B plot, and besides a quick prologue you......more