The Girl on the Stairs is a psychological crime thriller by Scottish author Louise Welsh. Jane and Petra are a lesbian couple who are expecting a baby. Jane is pregnant and has just moved to Berlin to join Petra. She is feeling a little isolated as she has no friends in Berlin and speaks little of the language. Petra is a successful businesswoman who often has to travel for her job. With little to keep her occupied, Jane becomes obsessed with the father and daughter who live next door. She hears arguments in the middle of the night and sees bruises on the 13 year old’s face and becomes insistent that the father is abusing his daughter. She also becomes involved with an older couple who live downstairs, although the woman is suffering from dementia and the man isn’t very welcoming. She hears rumors about the mother of the family next door being either missing or murdered.

The story is gripping and keeps the reader guessing whether any of what Jane suspects is true. Jane is obviously damaged in many ways herself but as soon as one starts to doubt Jane, something happens to escalate her suspicions and bring us back to her side. The atmosphere is dark and tense as Jane explores her neighbourhood that includes a derelict building that overlooks the apartment. Everyone in the book appears to be lying and keeping secrets. Who to believe – who to trust?

The Girl on the Stairs had me rooting for Jane one minute and wanting to force her to give up her poking and prying ways the next. The author maintains a claustrophobic tension throughout the book and the many twists and turns keep the pages turning. The book is unsettling and disturbing to the point that many readers will be uncomfortable. Personally I give it a big thumbs up! ( )

"The Girl On The Stairs" by Louise Welsh: tense, multi-layered thriller that I found deeply satisfying


At the start of "The Girl On The Stairs" I thought I was reading a well observed description of how dislocating it is to find oneself living in a foreign city, surrounded by people who speak a language you barely understand and who, when they politely switch to flawless English to include you in a conversation, somehow make you feel more isolated and add to your growing sense of cultural incompetence. I recognised the tension that accompanies becoming aware that, even though things here seem to be the same as at home, they are different in important ways that you sense only like a just-beyond-hearing-range high-pitched scream.

It felt real to me and bound me to poor, pregnant, Scottish Jane, living with here urbane partner, Petra, in a flat in Berlin that she did not choose, populated by people she does not know, and in which she is too often alone.

I absorbed her anxiety. I shared her suspicions of her what her neighbour was doing to his daughter, the girl on the stairs, behind closed doors. I admired Jane's bravery as she decided to act rather than to hide in her apartment and pretend everything was O.K.

Then, bit by bit, I started to doubt. Walsh gave me just enough information to suspect that Jane was not a reliable narrator, that her perception might be skewed, that not everything she described might be true.

Of course, I did not know which parts of Jane's narration could not be trusted and the foreign location and alien society made it harder for me to make a judgement. Which, of course, meant I was in exactly the same situation as Jane herself.

Walsh then ratcheted up the tension, drawing on the shadows of Berlin's dark past (the invading Russian Army used rape as a weapon of retribution on a scale that ranks second only to the Japanese in Nanking) and its unpleasant present (prostitution, violent punks, drunks and drug users in the streets and wraps it all in the chill dreariness of a Berlin winter.

The plot is clever, plausible and disclosed with a perfect control of pace.

But it is not the plot that haunts me, it is the perfectly evoked sense of threat that remains my strongest memory of this book. This is threat that many women experience, that their vulnerability will be translated into punishment at the hands of violent men. This threat, which is not just an absence of safety but an expectation of pain, drives Jane. It taints everything that she sees. It looms over her, cornering her, leaving her with the option of passive surrender or violent rage. This threat is amplified by Jane's history, by her pregnancy, and by her isolation. But what takes this book beyond the ordinary is that, in many ways, the most threatening thing is the book is Jane herself. I was left feeling that she cast the shadows she lived in. That she evoked, perhaps even provoked, the violence around her. That the girl on the stairs that we should worry about is not the neighbour's daughter, but Jane herself. That she is damaged and that the damage is contagious.

That notion is paranoid and not entirely rational but it is what the book led me to believe and feel. Which is, perhaps, what the whole book is about. ( )

To be honest this was a pretty annoying book and the ending didn't make up for it. However, would still read more from the author as got the feeling that this wasn't her at her best. ( )

Cleverly done, walking the line all the way through of what is real and what the imaginings of a heavily pregnant woman, an old slightly deranged woman, and two men with things in their past to hide. Just a bit detached for me, as I couldn't really like any of the characters. ( )

If you enjoy ambiguity and unreliable narrators, you'll love this.

'The Girl on the Stairs' is Louise Welsh's fifth novel but the first I've read (thanks book group!). After this, I'll definitely be checking out her back catalogue.

What's it about?

Heavily pregnant Jane has just moved to Berlin with her Lebenspartner. While Petra works, Jane explores her immediate environs and quickly fixates on her neighbours: a single father and his teenage daughter, Anna. After Jane hears the father screaming at his child she decides that the girl must be protected, whether she wants it or not...

What's it like?

This is an engrossing psychological chiller with a not entirely likeable protagonist. *

Jane smokes, regularly risks her own safety and that of her unborn child and is often unnecessarily defiant. ('Put that up your flue and smoke it' she thinks as she informs the local priest of her gay relationship. And yet she somehow draws your sympathy despite herself. Using myriad small details Welsh subtly implies that Jane has been the childhood victim of male abuse and that this is where her desperation to save Anna springs from.

Gradually the reader is drawn into an impenetrable puzzle. Is Jane reading Alban Mann and his relationship with his daughter inaccurately? If so, why doesn't Anna simply deny it? Is Jane starving herself into psychosis? Or is the doctor as dangerous as she believes? Welsh's skill can be seen in the way that, even at the end of the book, certain elements remain ambiguous. As the narrative perspective always follows Jane, it is impossible to know for sure what motivates any of the other characters.

Petra plays the pragmatic, reliable (very German!) foil to Jane's emotional turmoil, ("All men pay for sex",) but when Welsh removes her from the scene entirely (a week long work trip), all the tensions come bubbling to a head.

As the action became more dramatic, I was genuinely gripped by the developments and, although the reader can see far more clearly than Jane does, there are still some twists and turns in the final few pages. These are believable - and utterly chilling.

A controversial story?

One review I read surprised me by suggesting that this book pushed an LGBT agenda. I disagree entirely; the fact that Petra and Jane have a loving relationship is presented in a very similar way to other relationships in a similar position. They have sex, they argue, Jane sometimes resents Petra's ability to work and earn money while she is expected to stay at home. Jane sometimes seems to anticipate trouble, ('The taxi driver...didn't say anything, not even when she took Petra's face in her hands and kissed her on the lips',) even possibly to almost desire it, but when abuse does come her way it's obviously related to her investigation of her neighbours rather than a genuine anger at her sexuality.

On a different note, a feminist reader might be concerned by the implication that pregnancy can cause a woman to be emotionally unstable, even dangerously deranged. Unfortunately, it is a (slim) possibility so I have no problem with it being fictionalised. Jane is clearly not intended to be an everywoman.

Final thoughts

I've never been to Berlin so can't comment on the accuracy of the setting but Welsh focuses primarily on Jane's immediate surroundings and the claustrophobia of those is convincingly evolved.

The epilogue builds well on the chilling events of the final chapters and leaves the reader with a lot to think about.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and will definitely be looking out for Welsh's previous novels. Now the question is just where to start. Suggestions welcomed!

* I'm not suggesting that female protagonists should be likeable, or even that likeability is a particularly relevant assessment criteria when discussing fictional characters (see discussion here), but the fact remains that she is quite an ambivalent character. ( )