Ever since they built the road through her family's farm, separating the big yellow house from the pastures of Sybil's youth, nothing has been the same. At least the house remains, full of her memories, which wander through the rooms like ghosts. When Jess moves to America to marry Laurie in a whirlwind romance, she soon learns that his Grandmother and her creaky old house come with him. Stubborn, ailing and no longer able to look after herself, Sybil must rely on this British girl who has come to steal her beloved grandson from her. The echoing spectres of dead loved ones follow Sybil as she travels farther along the road to senility, but will those same echoes drive Jess towards madness? In Sybil, Monica Dickens has produced a character rich in determination, dark humour, and resilience. First published in 1966, The Room Upstairs is a portrait of a woman's fight with time, who refuses to be forgotten, and who refuses to forget.

Room Upstairs depicts the life of an old woman, Sybil, who becomes the prey of vacillating loyalties and bewilderments of modern society. A six-line highway slices through her farm, leaving a farmhouse on one side and the barn on the other. Sybil, a widow of eighty, fractures her thigh after the wedding of her grandson. Dorothy Grue, a housekeeper, is hired to look after Sybil. Dorothy starts to rule the house and keeps Sybil under control by every possible means, but when Dorothy becomes interested in the herb recipes written down by Sybil's father, she will finally taste her own medicine. This is a grim, relentless story, with touches of macabre, about a proud woman hanging grimly on to what is left of her well-remembered past.