The Attic Child

In 1907, Celestine, a twelve-year-old African boy, is imprisoned in an attic room of a large house by the sea. Decades later, Lowra, a young orphan girl born into wealth and privilege, is also imprisoned in the same attic. Lola Jaye's novel The Attic Child is a hauntingly powerful, emotionally charged, and unique dual-narrative novel about family secrets, love, loss, identity, and belonging, seen through the lens of Black British History. It is an incredibly important book that will break your heart but also make it sing. It is also a powerful and emotional story that will stay with readers for a long time.

Format: Hardback
Length: 480 pages
Publication date: 28 April 2022
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

1907: Twelve-year-old Celestine, confined to an attic room in a grand house by the sea, yearns for his family in Africa, despite his struggles to remember his mother's face and sometimes even his real name. As the years pass, he is treated as an unpaid servant, his dreams of freedom fading.

Decades later, Lowra, a young orphan girl born into wealth and privilege, finds herself imprisoned in the same attic. Under the floorboards, she discovers an old porcelain doll, an unusual beaded claw necklace, and a mysterious sentence etched on the wall behind an old cupboard, written in an unidentifiable language. These artifacts provide her with a strange sense of comfort, suggesting that she is not the first child to be confined there.

Lola Jaye has crafted a hauntingly powerful, emotionally charged, and unique dual-narrative novel, The Attic Child, that explores family secrets, love, loss, identity, and belonging through the lens of Black British History. This novel is an incredibly important work that will break your heart but also make it sing. Mike Gayle praises it as "an incredibly important book," describing it as "beautifully crafted, compelling storytelling that will undoubtedly break your heart but also make it sing." Tracy Chevalier also commends it, stating that it is "important storytelling about issues of race and privilege that will stay with me for a long time." Dorothy Koomson praises it as "just brilliant," while Lisa Jewell describes it as "powerful and emotional."

The Attic Child is a powerful and emotional tale that delves into the complexities of family, race, and privilege, offering a thought-provoking and unforgettable perspective on the human experience.

Weight: 724g
Dimension: 165 x 241 x 44 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529064568