It seems like a kind of ridiculous plot as it plays out but hints are dropped that the outside world is a dystopia. The 104 steps lead to a dangerous top floor and slowly, but surely the interconnected dramas of the different characters are moving up the stairs. Vine has not only produced a quietly smouldering suspense novel but also presents an accurately atmospheric portrayal of London in the heady 60's.

They come about through confusing the two kinds of truth telling: the declaration of opinion and principle and the recounting of history. Because most of us justify evil actions with self-deceptions and rationalizations, I found Oliver and Blossom’s single-mindedness wooden and unbelievable. Another allusion is to Tennyson’s poem Mariana and one that interested me greatly to a painting by Bronzino of Lucrezia Panciatichi, dressed in a beautiful red gown.

There are some things that are too important to sacrifice for something as simple and petty as food and acceptance.

It is established that all these characters are 16 year old orphans and that they were all abducted at their state homes and blind folded till they arrived on the stairs. We slowly learn the truth as the past, present and future join and the story reaches its fatal conclusion. At the beginning, Oliver sets out to shame and manipulate insecure, passive Abigail, alternately treating her seductively and indifferently.I lived Asta’s too, and putting this one with my other Vines on the organised bookshelves makes we want to do a huge re-read. William Golding shows us this in Lord of the Flies, as does Scott Smith in The Ruins, Jose Saramago in Blindness and Stephen King in his novella The Mist. William Sleator (1945-2011) is the author of numerous science fiction books for children and young adults, including Interstellar Pig, House of Stairs, and Blackbriar. It was fairly short which I felt worked in it's favor, keeping the story from getting too monotonous. Maybe take that left instead of your usual right and see what it can lead to, because before you know it the cycle is complete.