Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Upstairs at the Party
    Unavailable
    Upstairs at the Party
    Unavailable
    Upstairs at the Party
    Audiobook11 hours

    Upstairs at the Party

    Written by Linda Grant

    Narrated by Tricia Kelly

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    In the early Seventies a glamorous couple known as Evie/Stevie appear out of nowhere on the isolated concrete campus of a new university. To a group of teenagers experimenting with radical ideas they seem blown back from the future, unsettling everything and uncovering covert desires. But the flamboyant self-expression hides deep anxieties. For Adele, with the most to conceal, Evie/Stevie become a lifelong obsession.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJul 3, 2014
    ISBN9781471270253
    Unavailable
    Upstairs at the Party
    Author

    Linda Grant

    Linda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for the Art of Reportage in 2006. Her most recent novel, The Clothes on Their Backs, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. She writes for The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Vogue.

    Related to Upstairs at the Party

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      HOW I WRITE Lucinda Riley

      Jun 17, 2019

      Irish-born Lucinda Riley is the bestselling author of over 20 novels. Her Seven Sisters series has topped the charts the world over, and has been optioned for a TV show. I have to write my first draft in total solitude. As we have four kids and our

      1 min read

    • Article

      For Snow Queens Who Have Considered Suicide Because Paul Newman in the First Twenty Minutes of Paris Blues Is Too Much

      Jun 14, 2022

      But I start with the great Sidney Poitier because his stardom was an established part of the Freedom movement in 1964, and he was to be the chaperone of my inner awakening that dramatic year. Indianapolis, my hometown, had some brave marches and two

      10 min read

    • Article

      Our Unconventional Love Affair

      Mar 16, 2020

      Our Unconventional Love Affair
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon

      Apr 11, 2022

      I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Cherie Jones

      Jan 7, 2021

      Cherie Jones
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Lauren Oyler And Patricia Lockwood On Their ‘Evil Twin’ Internet Novels

      Feb 8, 2021

      I hate it here. Everyone agrees that “here” sucks. We are miserable and unproductive and lonely all at once. Time goes fast but not in the way that it flies when you’re having fun, more like when you wake up after a nap to find that it’s suddenly dar

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Casey Gerald

      Dec 14, 2018

      There’s a line in my book that reads, “I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby (alleged), the Spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey.” My reading tend

      2 min read

    • Article

      Eve’s star power BONO’S MY DAD!

      Mar 14, 2021

      Eve’s star power BONO’S MY DAD!
      4 min read

    • Article

      About Ed

      Jun 14, 2022

      I walk into the orchid show with Ed. As soon as I see the tumultuous hall I know he won’t last long. Ed walks like an old man though he is forty. After ten minutes on his feet, he vomits on some purple phalaenopsis. I get him outside through a fire e

      18 min read

    • Article

      Lockdown Stories

      Nov 13, 2020

      Lockdown Stories
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      This Back Is a Familiar Back

      May 1, 2023

      This Back Is a Familiar Back
      8 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      A Letter to My Sons

      Sep 25, 2019

      A Letter to My Sons
      7 min read

    • Article

      That Particular Sunday

      Jul 6, 2023

      That Particular Sunday
      26 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Jun 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      11 min read

    • Article

      2022 500-Word Essay Contest

      Apr 29, 2023

      2022 500-Word Essay Contest
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ineffectual Tribute to Len

      Mar 15, 2019

      After graduate school I hung around another year and drove a cab for Iowa City Yellow Cab. The cab was a boat, a Chevrolet Caprice wagon. I could have put a mattress in the back and lived in it. I didn’t hate the job. I’d sit in the Kroger parking lo

      24 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Three Poems
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Upstairs at the Party

    3.5/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This book was OK, but only OK. I read through to the finish but if I'd lost the book part-way though I wouldn't have bothered to get another copy and keep reading. The characters are about my generation, so there was some interest there because of a certain amount of common experience. Maybe it's because I'm male that I didn't engage fully with this story. It is mostly focused on women, one Jewish woman in particular. I'm not that.. I don't think it's all my fault, however, the author has to take some responsibility. I don't think Grant demonstrates for us why the main character behaved the way she did. I certainly didn't understand, anyway.
    • 4/5
      My favourite things about this book were the writing, the setting and the main character's point of view. The writing was generally good, with occasional stunning parts -- particularly a few analogies. The 1970's experimental university setting and the characters generated in the setting were very clever. These factors explain my four star rating. The actual story -- the mystery surrounding's Evie's death and the impact it had on the main character's life -- was my least favourite part of the book. The plot seemed unnecessarily melodramatic and took away from the strength of the writing, characters and setting. Still, I am now curious to hunt down some of Linda Grant's other books.
    • 5/5
      I have always enjoyed reading novels about university life, and this is an especially good one. It follows the characters far beyond their time as students who meet during their first year at a university in Yorkshire (I think it is actually meant to be York itself) in the early 1970s. The novel is narrated by Adele Ginsberg who, despite flunking her A Levels, had more or less blagged her way to university on the basis of a poem with which she had won a competition while still a schoolgirl back home in Liverpool. After winning the prize she sent a copy of the poem to beatnik guru, Allan Ginsberg (of 'Howl' fame) hinting at a family link between them. Ginsberg politely responded, maintaining the fiction that they were related. Adele uses the correspondence to secure a place at the new experimental university where liberalism holds sway and regulation is an alien concept.Adele is already no stranger to tragedy and loss. A few years previously her father, whom she idolised, had committed suicide while on remand awaiting trial for fraud, having been running a low grade Ponzi scheme. University, though, seems a revelation and she quickly makes friends with Dora, a committed feminist, Rose, an ardent Communist and Gillian, a particularly nice girl redolent with bourgeois values. She also encounters the androgynous couple Evie and Stevie. They go everywhere together, and dress almost identically. As their first year passes the personalities of the various characters become more clear, though the greatest change occurs to Gillian. Having initially idolised Adele for her forthright lack of convention she falls under the sway of Rose and becomes deeply involved in far left politics around the campus. At her first lecture Adele meets and befriends Bobby, an openly gay and exuberant fellow student, whom she inducts into her group.The party of the title is for Adele's birthday, and the tragic conclusion to the night of celebrations proves to be the scene of the defining moment of the story, though Grant deftly keeps us waiting for the eventual denouement. She also captures the different periods marvellously as she tracks the various students' subsequent careers. All in all a very entertaining book, and I shall definitely be looking for more by her.