lisa jewell books in order the family upstairs

When they eventually left, he didn’t talk to me for days. “The house was full of wine but he said we didn’t have any and sat there brooding, unwilling to make eye contact with them or me. “I wasn’t allowed to see the family and friends who could have helped me, knowing if they tried to rescue me it would make things worse.”Įventually, two concerned college friends did go to the house during what she describes as the couple’s “rigid Saturday night routine”. “You know you are wasting your life that it is being stolen from you, and that each day is a day you are never going to get back, but your feet are plugged into cement. “I’d always known I wanted to set down my thoughts about the marriage how dark, bleak and endless it feels to be stuck with someone who somehow manages to exert their control over you,” she explains of a theme that has found its way into many of her novels. Unfortunately, the “love-bombing” her new husband showed in the early stages of their relationship quickly became an attempt to control every aspect of Lisa’s life. She married the following year a decision she now describes as a misguided bid for security after growing up with her emotionally distant father. My sister and I inhabited an imaginary world and invented characters.”Īfter abandoning her A-levels on the first day of term for an art foundation course at her local adult education college, Lisa was 20 when she met her first husband in London.īy this point, having been a secretary and pattern room assistant, she was working in a PR role for the fashion retailer Warehouse, set up by design guru Jeff Banks.

So we retreated into a corner with my mother. “My dad was difficult he didn’t like children who had opinions, which became harder as we grew older. Her mother a part-time secretary who had her two daughters within a year, Lisa being the eldest. Her father was a textile agent “selling Italian fabric out of suitcases”. “I come from a very un-academic family and grew up in a little cottage in Totteridge, north London, without books.

“There was nothing normal about the way I became a best-selling commercial novelist,” she laughs, still sounding somewhat incredulous about the millions of books she has sold. Lisa’s journey to success has been every bit as complex as one of her addictive, time-shifting plots. I had to get out of the house and I’m lucky that I’ve been in a position to rent external space.” “Just as I settle down to write, a child appears and finds me the most fascinating person in the world. “I’m used to writing at the kitchen table or in a coffee shop but neither of those options are currently available,” she says. She even rented a small office space across the road from her London home in a bid to work without interruption.

Lisa jewell books in order the family upstairs