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    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs
    Audiobook1 hour

    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs

    Written by Claire Messud

    Narrated by Meghan O'Rourke and Patricia Kalember

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The New York Times best-selling author of the literary page-turner The Emperor's Children discusses her richly drawn new novel with Meghan O'Rourke (The Long Goodbye). Her latest release is a riveting compulsively readable confession of a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Mass, drawn into the complex world of her new neighbors -- a Lebanese scholar and professor of Ethical History, his glamourous Italian artist wife and their son -- who move in and change her life in ways she never expected. With a reading from the novel by Patricia Kalember (Don't Dress for Dinner).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSymphony Space
    Release dateJun 18, 2013
    ISBN9781467664301
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud: The Woman Upstairs

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    Reviews for Thalia Book Club

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Some books I read because they have been recommended by friends and some I just pick randomly from the library shelves. Among the later some turn out not good and some unforgettable . This is one such book. The long narrative monologue by an unmarried elementary teacher completely held my attention due to her obsession with all the members of an exotic family and her desire to please them , the outcome of such a situation and then her insight at her own condition and how this changes her personality. Would definitely read more of her.
    • 3/5
      I'm still sorting through what I think about this book. The main character is vividly drawn and compelling, and there are sections of the story that carry along breathlessly with them. But on the whole, there's very little plot and I found myself not quite invested enough in Nora's infatuation with the Shahid's to be deeply engaged. The ending is powerful and dramatic and kind of makes you wish that Messud hadn't held back the action until the last ten pages.
    • 5/5
      I LOVED this book. The Woman Upstairs delves into the interior life of Nora, a teacher and artist in her late 30s who becomes obsessed with the Shahid family, particularly the mother, Sirena, but also her son and husband. Not much really happens in the book, but that's okay, because the story is propelled by Nora's pulsating rage at what we think at first is societal expectations of how women are supposed to be. We realise that there is more to this rage than meets the eye, and this device kept me reading to find out exactly what. Nora's voice is incredibly distinctive, and Messud makes fantastic use of a first-person POV to pull the reader into Nora's mind. I liked the way that she occasionally seems to address the reader (although she's probably talking to a more general 'you' than 'you, dear reader'). The characters around Nora are strongly drawn and felt like real people to me, or at least like Nora's impressions of what they were like.I appreciated the extra material at the end of my edition, especially the short essay by Messud on her thinking behind the novel. I always find it fascinating to peer behind the curtain and discover the motivations behind great pieces of writing.I'd never heard of Messud before reading this, but I definitely want to read more of her work (as well as the suggestions for 'further reading' in my edition).
    • 4/5
      Messud presents the first person account of an angry Nora Eldridge, third grade teacher and wanna be artist. She recounts the narrative of a family she met about four years ago when a new student arrived at her school. When Resa Shahid is bullied by another student in the school, Nora becomes intricately involved in his family's life. With Sirena, Resa's mother, she shares a studio so that they can work on their art together. She babysits Resa and even enjoys the long walks she takes with his father Skandar . Because of Sirena , Nora reinvigorates her art interest, creating miniature dioramas of famous people in their rooms, Emily Dickinson, Virginnia Wolff, etc. Sirena works on an installation called the Wonderland which is set to be displayed in Paris. They become great friends and share in the celebration of each other's closeness. The installation art is based on Alice in Wonderland and her trip down the rabbit hole. The metaphor is important for the novel. As the story unfolds we have to remember that Nora is telling the story as an angry narrator wanting to start a real life. The history that she shares is one that sees her falling in love with each of the Shahid family members, too much in love. By being close to them, she became closer to the kind of person she wanted to be. Years later when the family had moved away, Nora still held on to the connection she felt with them. However her imagined closeness it shattered when she discovers something years later in a Paris museum. Important quote:At that moment, Nora felt that she was “alone in a tiny pool of light in a great dark room, as if I were myself the figure in someone else’s diorama, manipulated in my own stage set by a giant I could not see.” The author interviewed:She didn't want to convey a message, she insists; more than anything else, she wanted to "create a person" in her entirety, and to explore an interior life. "The moment that I had in mind in a way was in Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog". He's having this affair with the lady, and he's walking his child to school, and he thinks, 'How can it be that the thing that's most important to me in my whole life, nobody knows about but me?' It's not shared with anybody. And then he thinks, 'That's true for everyone else, too.' It's a moment of apprehension of the state of the world; all of us are going around with an entire story of our lives, completely different from the story of our lives that anybody else would tell. So much of our lives never breaks the surface."
    • 5/5
      The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud is an exceptional psychological thriller. The plot is not only well conceived, but also brilliantly executed and the characters come to life rapidly drawing the reader into Messud’s intricate tale. The Woman Upstairs is a book not to be missed by anyone who enjoys well-written psychological suspense.
    • 3/5
      I hovered between two stars and three stars for a minute before I rated this book. To me, three stars is a decent book; two means I didn't really like it.

      I did like this one, in a lot of ways. I feel like the story itself is decent - haven't we all had those relationships that are so all-encompassing that we can't stop thinking about them? And especially unreciprocated ones. I can so relate to that, but I feel like it was executed somewhat poorly.

      I like that the main character was a teacher. I don't come across many books with teachers as the focus, especially ones where the relationship began at school. I really liked the fact that Nora had such deep feelings for Sirena and Skandar, even though she was never quite sure how much the two of them reciprocated her feelings.

      However, I didn't like the pages and pages detailing Nora's feelings in such a melodramatic way. I get it - feelings and emotions ARE dramatic - but this felt overdone. I don't know if it's just because of the narrator, or if this is the author's normal style. Either way, it just wasn't for me.

      I was also a little disappointed in the fact that the big problem that the book led up to - Sirena using a video of Nora as part of her art, without warning her - was only revealed at the very end. We spent the entire book hearing about Nora being angry only to have to wait until the last couple of chapters to learn why. I'd have preferred to find out earlier, then read more on Nora's life afterwards.

      Solid story, good writing, just not one of my favorites.
    • 3/5
      I have to admit I chose this book from the library because I recognised the staircase on the cover, which for some reason is back-to-front - it seems apt though, as the story didn't go in the direction I expected it to either. It's an interesting read, with a well-thought out main character who wasn't always likeable (she's the same age as me and I got tired of her moaning about how so-very-old she was) but she was intriguing nonetheless.

      The prose was very well-written, although there were more descriptions of things (sometimes irrelevant to the story) than there were actual events. At one point I did almost stop reading, but carried on as I wanted to read what the terrible betrayal was going to be. When I got to that point, I felt a bit let down. I found it hard to find any sympathy for the main character. She was the same at the end of the story as she was at the beginning, whereas the family she became obsessed with developed as the story went on. An interesting story that kept me reading, although it's difficult to say that I liked it.
    • 4/5
      This is one I wish I had read, rather than listened to because I think I missed the opportunity for reflection this fiction encourages. It's a rather cerebral read and told in first person by Nora Eldridge, the main character who both experiences the events in the book and also reflects on them. She is a thinker and very self-aware and the title is not a physical state (like the Girl on the Train or the Woman in the Window) but a metaphorical one. The "woman upstairs" is the innocuous, socially respectable, upstanding female citizen with education and intelligence, but lacking passion. Nora chafes against this as much as she fulfills it. She is a 3rd grade teacher, still single in her late 30s (by choice) yet frustrated in her artistic ambitions and ultimately experiencing a mid-life crisis of interiority. She let responsibility and a traditional path take precedence over her art and is beginning to realize the cost to herself. This comes to light when a foreign family moves to Cambridge where she lives and teaches. Raza, the little boy ends up in her class and through him she meets and becomes embroiled in their family which includes mother, and working artist Sirena and father, Skandar who is a visiting prof. at Harvard. Nora's best friend perceives her entanglement with them as such: a little boy you want to steal, a woman you are in love with and a husband you want to sleep with. Complicated. Nora and Sirena share an art studio at Sirena's invitation and while this awaken's Nora's dormant talent, it also awakens all sorts of feelings and issues. Sirena, meanwhile takes off in her career. She was established in Europe, but has interest from NY galleries and creates a vast interactive artistic installment, Wonderland, in their studio space. Nora describes her encounter with the exhibit (and ultimately her time with the Shahid family): "I felt....as if in any given instant anything might happen, all wonder and possibility." The family stays only 1 school year, but the impact on Nora lasts much longer and the twist at the end is a great topic of debate for book clubs. What seems like an act of betrayal may ultimately be an act of emancipation.
    • 4/5
      So, I'm really not certain how many stars I want to give this book. On one hand, the plot meandered senselessly and frustratingly while I waited for the author to get to the point already. On the other, the discussion of anger and the portrayal of an angry woman (who keeps much of that anger bottled up inside) was one I could really relate to. Have you ever had the uncomfortable feeling that the portrayal of an unlikable character hits a little too close to home? Is a little too much like you? And you don't like it? That's how I felt about this book.
    • 4/5


      As “the woman upstairs”—“the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound”—Nora is the “other woman”: not the pretty one, not the talented one, not the exceptional one, but the other one. Messud’s slow pacing allows the reader to access Nora’s thought processes and to identify with her feelings of isolation, marginalization, and political and social unrest. The other woman is, after all, “completely invisible”. It is also the book's principal motif, surfacing periodically to describe Nora's various attributes as an uncharacteristically plain woman, a woman who doesn't rock any boats or shine like a supernova-- one who is always nice, mannerly, and nonthreatening to others. Essentially, anonymous and invisible. Nora has previously accepted this about herself, living up to the part with a virtuous acceptance.

      Lots of women don’t like the main character of this book, because of this. They see her as pathetic. This is a common view of the “smugly married." It's easy to look down your nose at the main character if you have all the adornments of 'female success': the most important of which is that someone has found you sexually desirable enough to marry you. And once you have children, the deal is sealed. You are woman, hear you roar!

      This "spinster narrative" coupled with a Freudian family romance, and narrated by a wonderfully deranged and yet highly incisive and relate able character, is a compelling read. Especially if you are able to see your own psychological flaws in her. Messud's singular voice shows Nora's quiet desperation at her life, and all her anger towards her unhappy lot of being born a woman, and a mediocre one at that. "Don't all women feel the same?" she insists. "The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury..." And Nora returns to the phrase “the woman upstairs” again and again: “We’re not the madwomen in the attic — they get lots of play, one way or another,” she says. “We’re the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound. In our lives of quiet desperation, the woman upstairs is who we are, without a goddamn tabby or a pesky lolloping Labrador, and not a soul registers that we are furious. We’re completely invisible.”

      A person of talent unpracticed which time will turn to mediocrity because it was simply never developed. A person so inconsequential that those she thinks are closest to her will humiliate her if it serves their own ends, she believes. And she's angry because now she knows all this with certainty. Naturally, she has lied to herself about this truth. It's called coping. And this is where the writer I think advances beyond a lot of readers. We all lie to ourselves about some critical truth in our lives. Unless you have caught yourself in some lie on which your identity stands, and then have had some unexpected circumstance bring you right up against that lie so powerfully that it can literally knock you to your knees, you may simply lack the experience to fully appreciate this book. A lot of people don't like the book I think because most of us just keep whistling right to the grave. Blind, uncaring, and unknowing.

      This may be Nora's rage, but it’s fantastically smart rage — anger that never distorts, even in the upper registers. When Nora complains about women like herself who dutifully tuck themselves away, she ricochets from Charlotte Bronte to Jean Rhys to Henry David Thoreau to Ralph Ellison. Wherever she digs, she hits rich veins of indignation. We don't know where all this rage is coming from, at first. That is part and parcel of the immaculate pacing and architecture of this novel, a narrative so deftly chilling that my hair stood up on end at times.

      Nora and Sirena then rent a studio together. Awakened by Sirena’s encouragement from years of narrowly constrained duty, Nora feels aroused and delighted. All should be lovely, but Messud keeps this friendship tightly sealed in Nora’s obsessive voice. There’s something claustrophobic about her affection. Soon she’s babysitting Reza and fantasizing about Sirena’s husband. Yet Nora claims, “If you’d told me my own story about someone else, I would have assured you that this person was completely unhinged” — demonstrating exactly the kind of self-knowledge that keeps the reader off-balance.

      Even as this psychological drama races toward a climax, you have no idea which way this character is going to go; Nora had mentioned murder in the first couple of chapters, is this what she's planning? Is it revenge? And Nora seduces us with her piercing assessment of the way young women are cultured; the way older women are trapped: “When you’re a girl, you never let on that you are proud, or that you know you’re better at history, or biology, or French, than the girl who sits beside you,” she says. “It doesn't occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.” If Nora is a monster, she’s also a sympathetic and perceptive victim. But of what? Bad luck? Self-pity? A chauvinistic society?

      A more bellicose, far less enjoyable novel would hand us the answer. But Messud isn't writing an op-ed, and her story’s feminist critique of America rubs raw. What eventually rises above these gender issues is Nora’s pained cries. It doesn't matter if you've felt this pain or not; It’s difficult not to feel your own shameful anxieties and fragile hopes being flayed by these braided strands of confession and blame, in this novel.
      It was easy for me to identify with Nora. I'm a frustrated, nonproductive artist. I envy those with drive, ambition and creativity.

      Messud has created a fascinating character who may stretch the boundaries of decency, but always remains believable and realistic. There may be very little plot, say some, but you will be on the edge of your seat, compelled. I turned the pages feverishly, as I couldn't wait to know what happened next with The Woman Upstairs. I will have to check out more of this author's novels at my local library. I think I will love them, as well.
    • 3/5
      I hovered between two stars and three stars for a minute before I rated this book. To me, three stars is a decent book; two means I didn't really like it.

      I did like this one, in a lot of ways. I feel like the story itself is decent - haven't we all had those relationships that are so all-encompassing that we can't stop thinking about them? And especially unreciprocated ones. I can so relate to that, but I feel like it was executed somewhat poorly.

      I like that the main character was a teacher. I don't come across many books with teachers as the focus, especially ones where the relationship began at school. I really liked the fact that Nora had such deep feelings for Sirena and Skandar, even though she was never quite sure how much the two of them reciprocated her feelings.

      However, I didn't like the pages and pages detailing Nora's feelings in such a melodramatic way. I get it - feelings and emotions ARE dramatic - but this felt overdone. I don't know if it's just because of the narrator, or if this is the author's normal style. Either way, it just wasn't for me.

      I was also a little disappointed in the fact that the big problem that the book led up to - Sirena using a video of Nora as part of her art, without warning her - was only revealed at the very end. We spent the entire book hearing about Nora being angry only to have to wait until the last couple of chapters to learn why. I'd have preferred to find out earlier, then read more on Nora's life afterwards.

      Solid story, good writing, just not one of my favorites.
    • 5/5
      Wow. I loved this book. I guess I can see why not everyone does - how well you relate to the story and the main character, Nora, will depend very much on what sort of a person you are. I suppose a number of people will also look for more action than you'll find in this story. It is not plot-driven by any means. I can imagine many people will find Nora to be over-dependent on others and they won't understand how anyone could get into the situation in which Nora finds herself. I do understand Nora, however. So apart from appreciating Ms Messud's wonderful character developments, fascinating imagination of art and the world of artistic people and marvellous descriptions of the urban life in which the story is set, I felt a strong connection to Nora Eldridge. I am prepared to accept that I am in a minority in that regard, but even apart from that issue, I reckon this is one stunning book by an excellent author.
    • 1/5
      A rather dull novel about a single third grade teacher who becomes obsessed with the Lebanese family living upstairs. Their kid is in her class, and she uses him to get closer to first the mother and then the father. Some people just need to get a life. I listened to it on audio; who knew that a Lebanese accent is the same as an Italian one? The best I can say is that it isn't quite as bad as the worst books I've ever read, so I gave it one star.
    • 4/5
      a woman awakened, transformed, betrayed
    • 5/5
      I read this something like four years ago, but for some reason never added it here (it just showed up in a recommendation for another book, which is what jogged my memory). I remember liking this very much—it was smart and well done and the interpersonal tensions were both interesting and totally believable.
    • 4/5
      It's not unusual to develop a crush on an entire family. It's one of the rites of passage of adolescence, to fall not just for a person but the people who love them, the home that embraces them, their shared rituals and beliefs. You glimpse the promise of another way to live.However, Nora, the protagonist in The Woman Upstairs, is not an adolescent. She is a professional woman in her forties, eaten up with bitterness and disappointment over the way her life has turned out. She wanted to be an artist, instead she's a teacher, living alone. When she is befriended by Sirena, a professional artist, she sees everything that she is not. Sirena is a charismatic outsider. She also has a successful husband and an intelligent, attractive child.Nora is an intriguingly untrustworthy narrator. She tells us she hasn't led the life she wants. She has been nice and compliant, as a woman should be - but she doesn't sound nice at all. She never had the chances she deserved - but then she describes opportunities that she turned down. She says she's a good teacher because she has the open worldview of a child, yet her art is rigidly controlled.Even as we see Sirena and her family through Nora's eyes, we get a sense that their lives are not as idyllic as she suggests. Sirena faces her own challenges, as a woman and as an artist.At the beginning of the book, Nora describes her life as like a hall of mirrors. Behind every mirror is another mirror. There is no end. The narration, like the hall of mirrors, constantly turns back on itself and challenges the reader's perceptions.From Nora's personal relationships to her art to her memories, everything about her both illuminates and undermines the central question of how she came to be where she is now. Even at the end of the novel, when Nora appears to reach a resolution, you're not sure whether to believe her.
    • 5/5
      Reread in 2016. A completely engrossing book for me -- what a character study of an under-analyzed type of person. Maybe a little long, maybe a little wordy, but fascinating nonetheless.
    • 3/5
      I got into this story straight away and felt it was very strong for the first half of the book with a strong 1st person narrative establishing a very believable character. However, once her obsession with the parents of one of her school students was established it seemed to run out of ideas and the 'dramatic' discovery at the end of the book fell a bit flat.
    • 3/5
      Well written book but overall just too depressing. However, I thought about it for several days after finishing it so it made an impact.
    • 4/5
      Elementary school teacher Nora Eldridge knows how to make other people happy; her students, her dying mother, her ailing father. Yet, she long ago abandoned her dreams of being an artist, the one thing that might have made her happy. When Reza Shahid enters her classroom, Nora's outlook begins to change. Reza, his mother Sirena, a captivating Italian artist, and father Skander soon begin to take the place of the immediate family Nora never had. While Nora finds herself falling in love with each of the Shahids, her desperate attempts to keep them close will begin to clash with the family's larger ambitions.

      The Woman Upstairs starts with a punch. An angry, gritty rant penned by Nora after the remainder of the book's events take place. In brilliant language, Messud throws Nora at her readers, setting a perfect stage for the novel to perform on.

      "Really I’m angry because I’ve tried so hard to get out of the hall of mirrors, this sham and pretend of the world, or of my world, on the East Coast of the United States of America in the first decade of the twenty-first century. And behind every mirror is another fucking mirror, and down every corridor is another corridor, and the Fun House isn’t fun anymore and it isn’t even funny, but there doesn’t seem to be a door marked EXIT."

      She then tiptoes back to her life as a teacher and her introduction to Reza. While Messud's writing is continuously stunning, Nora's powerful voice retreats through the middle of the book as she details her increasing attachment to each member of the Shahid family.

      "What had I done with my time up till now, I had to wonder, and have to wonder now again: Does Being Happy simply Create More Time, in the way that Being Sad, as we all know, slows time and thickens it, like cornstarch in a sauce?"

      That slowed time is the drag that weakens the final third of the novel, save for the last few pages. As her happiness begins to shift toward jealously and abandonment, Nora is left to stew in those feelings for a seemingly long time. What might have been empathy for her situation became frustration, as the power of Messud's introduction to Nora suggested a shattering event that felt like it might never arrive.

      But it does. Oh. It. Does. We get that glorious, angry Nora back. And she tears through the last few pages with the fury she detailed in the first, creating a bookend to enclose the sometimes overdrawn sections in the novel's middle.
      (full review at rivercityreading.blogspot.com)
    • 4/5
      I felt deeply sorry for Norah as she inserts herself into another family, that of one of her students, as a way of filling her own emptiness.
    • 2/5
      At the beginning of this book we meet Nora Eldridge, the self-confident woman and very angry woman. As she herself tries to comprehend how she came to be the woman she is today Nora takes us back 5 years to the time she met and, literally became part of the Shahid family. At that time Nora was a discontented schoolteacher and a wanna-be artist with neither the drive nor conviction to be really outstanding at either occupation. Then the Shahid’s moved to Boston, their son Reza joined her class and before you know it Nora was Reza’s official baby sitter, his mother Sirena’s studio-mate and his father Skandar’s confidant. In turn and by degrees she falls into some form of love with all three of them. She begins to feel important in their lives and, finally, seems to have a purpose in her own life. Nora learned the hard way that when you determine your own self worth by what you think you mean to others you are bound to get heartbroken.

      When I turned the final page in this book I had to sit back for minute and wonder why I read the whole thing. I know I didn’t care for any of the Shahid family and I wasn’t too sure I even enjoyed Nora or her story very much. Maybe I missed something? I looked up some reviews by other readers and came across one review I wish I had read before I checked this book out of the library.

      The review said “If you are someone that must "like" or identify with the characters in the books that you choose...don't choose this one” and “If you are adverse to learning about different and interesting art mediums...avoid this one.”

      I wish I had read the review before I started the book.
    • 2/5
      unlikeable characters in an uninteresting story; so many commas
    • 4/5
      At the start of this novel we know one thing about Nora: she is very angry. The reason for this anger has to wait until the end, but provides the tension in this book: when is the disaster going to occur? It's a well written, quite cerebral read, which pauses for reflection frequently. The detailed prose builds up a believable picture of Nora, who has turned her back on her first love, art, for a more practical career as a school teacher. Her friendship with the family of one of her pupils - who have effectively lived her dream, leads her to rekindle her own suppressed creativity. I tend to find arty stuff makes my eyes glaze over, and to be honest here I didn't really 'get' the whole installation thing - it seemed a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes set-up, but you don't have to appreciate that kind of art to enjoy this book. It was quality literature without sacrificing readability. If there was anything about the final reveal that disappointed me, it was the sense of unfinished business: that at a base level what the book needed was a bit of confrontation to round it off.
    • 2/5
      OK, I really wanted to like this book - it received a lot of critical acclaim and I also happened to have the chance to see the author speak (her talk was wonderful)- but unfortunately, this just fell flat for me.
    • 2/5
      I did not like The Emperor's Children, so still ask myself why I bothered to pick up The Woman Upstairs. Unlike other readers, I found the writing style clumsy -- way too many commas and dashes -- there were over 50 commas on one page! I found it hard and tiresome to read...would not recommend it.
    • 3/5
      This is a novel about Nora Eldridge who is approaching middle age and is realizing her life is passing her by. As characters go, Nora is tiresome and needy but that's what the book is about; a lonely frustrated woman. No you won't like Nora but she is just a product of her poor choices, choices that could have been made (or have been made) by all of us. Many of us have probably had a moment in our lives just like Nora. Where we differ is in our reaction to our circumstances. Nora goes the extreme by becoming slightly obsessed and infatuated with the Shahids. And this is where Claire Messud succeeds with this novel. She gives you a protagonist so deeply flawed yet honest in depiction. She has created a character who in her desperation latches on to what she perceives to be her salvation. The relationships created by Messud with the three Shahids are distinctly different; each giving Nora something she needs. Her wants are clearly expressed within the novel.The characters of Sirena, Skandar and Reza are representative of Nora's needs. Sirena is the most defined and appears to have the most impact upon Nora's life (and oh what a "I didn't see that coming" moment she delivers at the end!)I did like this novel, appreciating Messud's clear and succinct writing style. She gives us strong characterizations and a believable plot.
    • 4/5
      This book is *so* good on the ego insecurities to which so many artistic people fall prey. Like OPEN CITY, it has a weird and sort of off-putting denouement -- but I'll say no more ... that would be plot spoiling.
    • 4/5
      Oh yes, this is great storytelling. This wonderfully atmospheric novel-in-miniature is more like a giant short story with a surprise ending. There are a limited number of characters—one, really—whom we get to see in great detail. And there is a creepy sense of foreboding we get right from the start. This story features a confused and angry woman who did all the right things but found her life empty anyway. Well, welcome to adulthood, my little pretty.

      Boston. A would-be artist teaches elementary school. She is unmarried at thirty-seven years old. Time is ticking over. One of the children in her class is son of Sirena and Shakhar, both of whom enjoy their very special child and also have lives in which they strive every day to create or explain the world.

      I loved what one reviewer said about the “woman upstairs” being one’s head and the “downstairs” being one’s heart and genitals. And I was riveted by the talk about art, the creative process and moments of inspiration. And by golly, I wanted to shake that perfectly capable Woman Upstairs to her senses.

      (view spoiler)[I knew, right from the moment Nora, our narrator, told us about the cameras set up to capture reactions to “Wonderland” that those cameras were going to capture something no one expected. I waited, and every time the cameras were mentioned, I got a thrill, and the impetus to carry on. I was perplexed, then, that the story was almost done and nothing had been mentioned, but then…there it was.

      I would have thought that Nora’s sexual encounter with Sirena’s husband would have been more distressing to see on film, but I am not one to argue about niceties. If watching a public display of her masturbation scene was thing that got her up off the couch, I’m all for it. She didn’t kill anyone: herself or her friends, though death hung over the novel like a pall. She made miniatures of suicide scenes, for goodness’ sake! and talked often about her mother’s death. Instead, as though giving voice to a curse, she swears to start living. I had to laugh. I certainly hope she does start grabbing life with both hands because we get one chance at this, and her time was rapidly running out.

      And no, I am not surprised that this was the one film among five that “sold out.” I don’t think her friends liked her less for knowing that about her. I also don’t think they could have convinced Nora to leave it in the film, had she known about it, which is probably why they didn’t tell her. But maybe they could have, to be fair. Nora’s masturbation scene was one of the early, really true, unscripted reactions to the scenery and since most of us seek the real thing in works of art, and I think Messud got this part right. (hide spoiler)]

      Good job, Messud!
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    • 2/5
      I thought this book replayed the same theme over and over - the lonely life of a middle-aged schoolteacher with aspirations to be an artist who becomes fixated on all three members of a family. She shares an artists' studio with the family's mother, the son is in her third-grade class and the object of her affections, and the father is a one-time lover who easily forgets her. The ending is a surprise and yet shouldn't be since she was so frequently used, albeit willingly, by the family. Nora, the main character, is a study in sadness, and should have elicited my sympathy - that didn't happen. I was relieved to finish this book and surprised that I made it to the end.