The Pearl in the Attic

Karen McCombie's The Pearl in the Attic is a family mystery for 11 year olds about a girl who stumbles into her nana's secret life in a very strange London flat.

What happens

Scarlet is thirteen, with lilac hair and a mum who's brilliant at being organised and hopeless at jokes. It's just the two of them. Scarlet's so short of relatives that she can't even do her Spanish homework about her extended family.

Then the phone rings. Nana has had a fall and broken her arm, her collarbone, some ribs and a couple of fingers. In the hospital she keeps talking about a Mr Spinks, a baby called Zephyr and someone called Angie who steals her tea. And she makes Scarlet promise that nobody but her will find the pearl in the attic.

The doctor thinks Nana probably has dementia. But when Scarlet and her mum let themselves into Nana's flat above an empty shop, the fat old Staffie on the doorstep turns out to be Mr Spinks. And the tea thief? Angie is a grey parrot who can do Nana's voice perfectly!

The flat is wild. The stairs are stacked with books (Nana tripped over Harry Potter), the hall is a maze of labelled boxes, and the next staircase is lined with pairs of shoes on every step. Scarlet's descriptions are very funny, and you can feel her curiosity winning over her nerves.

Underneath the fun, it's a tender story about three generations who haven't been getting on. Scarlet feels guilty she hasn't seen Nana in over a year. Her unflappable mum is suddenly as scared as a little kid. The book opens in the same attic in 1947, with a boy and a precious bundle of story pages written by a girl called Ruby, so you know the past is going to matter.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Nana's dementia is described honestly, as something that will slowly curl round her mind like ivy. If someone in your family is living with dementia, this could be a comfort or it could be hard going, and you'll know which. In these opening chapters it sits right alongside plenty of laughs.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall is another Karen McCombie book in the library. Ellis is thirteen and anxious, and her mum's whirlwind wedding means swapping their North London flat for a crumbling mansion in Scotland, where two little windows high in a gable seem to stare right at her.