Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Vintage Canada (2014), 320 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this New York Times bestselling novel is the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and abandoned by a desire for a world beyond her own. Nora Eldridge is a reliable, but unremarkable, friend and neighbor, always on the fringe of other people�s achievements. But the arrival of the Shahid family�dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar, glamorous Sirena, an Italian artist, and their son, Reza�draws her into a complex and exciting new world. Nora�s happiness pushes her beyond her boundaries, until Sirena�s careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book � A Washington Post Top Ten Book of the Year � A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book � A Huffington Post Best Book � A Boston GlobeBest Book of the Year � A Kirkus Best Fiction Book � A Goodreads Best Book.… (more)
Media reviews
In this ingenious, disquieting novel, she has assembled an intricate puzzle of self-belief and self-doubt, showing the peril of seeking your own image in someone else’s distorted mirror — or even, sometimes, in your own.
This imprecision is also true of the characterisation. Nora seems more a construct, a collection of female stereotypes, than a rounded character. She's a spinster schoolteacher, dutiful daughter and handmaiden to an artist. There's a nod to Ibsen's A Doll's House in both her name and the little
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confining rooms of her art, and references to tragic women from Virginia Woolf to Jean Rhys are scattered around. The problem and the promise of this novel lie with Nora, whose yearning for a heightened life could be pushed beyond her obsession with Sirena and her enchanting family. She needs to be less a composite of women and more herself. Show Less
The interplay between reality and imagination in this textual hall of mirrors makes for a deft study of character underpinned by a gripping narrative. Messud writes beautifully and wryly (a crowd of tourists visiting an art gallery with audio guides are described as "a mass that drifted slow and
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imperturbable as oxen") but the real achievement of this novel is to imbue every chapter with thought-provoking questions surrounding the place of women in literature, society and – most importantly – their own minds. Female anger has never been so readable. Show Less
There is no doubt Messud will garner accolades for her brutally honest portrayal of a kind of everywoman made deliberately vague in her physical description, and imbued with emotions and desires that will resonate powerfully with many readers ...Likewise, you cannot fault Messud’s prose. Nora’s
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strong voice carries the novel, and it is marked by a frankness of tone and realistic emotion. Indeed, Messud gives each character, even little Reza, such a distinct voice you can practically hear the accents, though they are written without affectation.
If only the book wasn’t such a slog. At 290 pages, it reads more like 400.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member PermaSwooned
Like several other reviewers, I found this book to be very disappointing. The set-up at the beginning portrays the narrator as a woman on fire with rage; someone who was betrayed so badly it can't even be described, and leads one to believe this will be described quickly and that the bulk of the
Nora Eldridge is a woman of 42 who visioned herself as an artist from an early age, but was more or less persuaded by her mother that the risk of failure was too great, and she became a 3rd grade teacher. She also put aside pursuing any dreams of her own to care for her mother who died of ALS, and various other family obligations. She became "the woman upstairs" who could always be depended on to put others first, do the expected, and not reach for a fulfilling life of her own.
She gets a new student from Paris whose parents are Lebanese and Italian, and sort of falls in love with him as someone special. She meets his mother, who has some success in Paris with her installation art, and his father, who is a visiting fellow at Harvard. She puts all her hopes and dreams onto these people and ends up being "used" by them, and "betrayed" for gain and fame by the mother.
I had a tough time with the extent of her obsession, since she seemed to feel that any and/or all of them would willingly give her a new and exciting life she was unable to seek out on her own. The book is trying to explain to the reader the development and extent of her obsession and how she was obviously wronged all along the way. Now she is furious, and plans to take her revenge. Do we have ANY indication this might happen? Well, no!!
I thought one of the most telling things was the husband looking at her own art. She makes small dioramas of female artists....shoebox sized. They faithfully recreate their "rooms". He asks her why she makes them so small.....that the tiny constraints are in tune with how she limits herself. Best observation in the whole book.
It all seemed kind of sad and pointless to me by the end, Her descriptions are quite vivid of the Shahids.....but I have no idea what Nora looks like.
This author has many good reviews for other works, but this was a very disappointing introduction.
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story will be about her revenge. But no....that's not what we get at all.Nora Eldridge is a woman of 42 who visioned herself as an artist from an early age, but was more or less persuaded by her mother that the risk of failure was too great, and she became a 3rd grade teacher. She also put aside pursuing any dreams of her own to care for her mother who died of ALS, and various other family obligations. She became "the woman upstairs" who could always be depended on to put others first, do the expected, and not reach for a fulfilling life of her own.
She gets a new student from Paris whose parents are Lebanese and Italian, and sort of falls in love with him as someone special. She meets his mother, who has some success in Paris with her installation art, and his father, who is a visiting fellow at Harvard. She puts all her hopes and dreams onto these people and ends up being "used" by them, and "betrayed" for gain and fame by the mother.
I had a tough time with the extent of her obsession, since she seemed to feel that any and/or all of them would willingly give her a new and exciting life she was unable to seek out on her own. The book is trying to explain to the reader the development and extent of her obsession and how she was obviously wronged all along the way. Now she is furious, and plans to take her revenge. Do we have ANY indication this might happen? Well, no!!
I thought one of the most telling things was the husband looking at her own art. She makes small dioramas of female artists....shoebox sized. They faithfully recreate their "rooms". He asks her why she makes them so small.....that the tiny constraints are in tune with how she limits herself. Best observation in the whole book.
It all seemed kind of sad and pointless to me by the end, Her descriptions are quite vivid of the Shahids.....but I have no idea what Nora looks like.
This author has many good reviews for other works, but this was a very disappointing introduction.
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LibraryThing member msbaba
The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, is a first rate psychological thriller that will keep readers spellbound, in the style of a classic Hitchcock film, right up until the final pages, where a stunning twist illuminates and clarifies the whole. This is a very smart, savvy novel—one that provides
The plot and characters are brilliantly constructed, the whole fully believable to the smallest psychological detail. Massud is a master storyteller and a fastidious psychological stylist. She’s also an exquisite writer. Reading this book is like taking a temporary journey inside the mind of the main character, Nora Eldridge. Readers will emerge gasping at the end, fully comprehending the character they’ve inhabited and the trajectory of her life.
Nora Eldridge is like a lot of middle-aged people. She believes she is living a lie. She thought she’d grow up to be a famous artist, to have a loving husband, and children. But she finds herself at forty trapped in the ordinary life of a spinster third-grade teacher. She sees herself as the invisible “woman upstairs” living a life of “quiet desperation,” a woman with occasional unremarkable boyfriends and a few close girlfriends—a woman stuck in the role of being a moral citizen and a dutiful daughter.
The book starts at the end, when Nora is 42 and fully enraged at life. She is so full of anger that she is bound and determined to break out of the confines of her middling existence and finally start living an authentic life. Most of the balance of the book takes us back five years, to 2004, the year Nora meets and falls in love with each member, individually, of the Shahid family. Nora first falls in love with Reza, one of her new third-grade students. He’s everything she wished her own child might have been. Next, she falls in love with Reza’s mother, Sirena. She is Italian and an installation artist who has already attracted significant international fame. Sirena is everything Nora wished she could be. Finally, Nora falls in love with Skandar, Reza’s father and Sirena’s husband. He is Lebanese and participating in a one-year fellowship at Harvard to complete a book on history and ethics. He is someone who is sincerely interesting in just being with Nora and talking with her. He is the type of man Nora would have wanted to marry.
For that whole academic year, Nora’s daily life is tied intimately to each member of the Shahid family. It is a year in which she is awash in love, a year in which she feels wholly “alive in the moment, a Sleeping Beauty awakened.” It is a year in which she finally feels she is living an authentic life. “Oh great adventure! Life there, before me, the infinite banquet lying in wait.”
But as we close this book, we ask ourselves: what was real and what was a lie? In fact, we find ourselves contemplating the very nature of reality itself.
The book is a thriller because there is something not quite right about the obsessive nature of Nora’s love for Sirena, Reza, and Skandar. It’s an all-consuming, compelling, and compulsive love, something very close to the murky mental illness territory of obsessive love, yet still balanced precariously, on the edge of normal. Readers are kept in a high state of tension fearing that somehow, Nora is going to step over the line, that something will go horribly wrong. And it does! But it is nothing that any reader would ever expect.
The twist at the end of this novel is a very real unraveling and unveiling of the complexity of life. There is nothing gimmicky about it. No, this is as authentic as it gets. Finally, you will understand Nora’s rage…and perhaps, absolve her.
But understanding the deep psychological intricacies of this story is only half the pleasure. This book provides considerable intellectual depth and thematic richness. Not only will readers be left pondering the nature of reality and asking: What is reality? What is an authentic life? Is reality purely subjective? Readers will also be left contemplating a number of substantial ethical and philosophical questions. What is love? What is friendship? Is Nora right when she states: “The hubris of it, thinking I could be a decent human being and a valuable member of family and society, and still create! Absurd.”
I hope you will choose to discover and experience this magnificent cerebral thriller for yourself. If this review has piqued your interest, I assure you that you will not be disappointed. The Upstairs Woman deserves every one of its five stars.
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sustained story telling, literary, and intellectually pleasure. In fact, it is one of the best books I’ve reviewed all year. The plot and characters are brilliantly constructed, the whole fully believable to the smallest psychological detail. Massud is a master storyteller and a fastidious psychological stylist. She’s also an exquisite writer. Reading this book is like taking a temporary journey inside the mind of the main character, Nora Eldridge. Readers will emerge gasping at the end, fully comprehending the character they’ve inhabited and the trajectory of her life.
Nora Eldridge is like a lot of middle-aged people. She believes she is living a lie. She thought she’d grow up to be a famous artist, to have a loving husband, and children. But she finds herself at forty trapped in the ordinary life of a spinster third-grade teacher. She sees herself as the invisible “woman upstairs” living a life of “quiet desperation,” a woman with occasional unremarkable boyfriends and a few close girlfriends—a woman stuck in the role of being a moral citizen and a dutiful daughter.
The book starts at the end, when Nora is 42 and fully enraged at life. She is so full of anger that she is bound and determined to break out of the confines of her middling existence and finally start living an authentic life. Most of the balance of the book takes us back five years, to 2004, the year Nora meets and falls in love with each member, individually, of the Shahid family. Nora first falls in love with Reza, one of her new third-grade students. He’s everything she wished her own child might have been. Next, she falls in love with Reza’s mother, Sirena. She is Italian and an installation artist who has already attracted significant international fame. Sirena is everything Nora wished she could be. Finally, Nora falls in love with Skandar, Reza’s father and Sirena’s husband. He is Lebanese and participating in a one-year fellowship at Harvard to complete a book on history and ethics. He is someone who is sincerely interesting in just being with Nora and talking with her. He is the type of man Nora would have wanted to marry.
For that whole academic year, Nora’s daily life is tied intimately to each member of the Shahid family. It is a year in which she is awash in love, a year in which she feels wholly “alive in the moment, a Sleeping Beauty awakened.” It is a year in which she finally feels she is living an authentic life. “Oh great adventure! Life there, before me, the infinite banquet lying in wait.”
But as we close this book, we ask ourselves: what was real and what was a lie? In fact, we find ourselves contemplating the very nature of reality itself.
The book is a thriller because there is something not quite right about the obsessive nature of Nora’s love for Sirena, Reza, and Skandar. It’s an all-consuming, compelling, and compulsive love, something very close to the murky mental illness territory of obsessive love, yet still balanced precariously, on the edge of normal. Readers are kept in a high state of tension fearing that somehow, Nora is going to step over the line, that something will go horribly wrong. And it does! But it is nothing that any reader would ever expect.
The twist at the end of this novel is a very real unraveling and unveiling of the complexity of life. There is nothing gimmicky about it. No, this is as authentic as it gets. Finally, you will understand Nora’s rage…and perhaps, absolve her.
But understanding the deep psychological intricacies of this story is only half the pleasure. This book provides considerable intellectual depth and thematic richness. Not only will readers be left pondering the nature of reality and asking: What is reality? What is an authentic life? Is reality purely subjective? Readers will also be left contemplating a number of substantial ethical and philosophical questions. What is love? What is friendship? Is Nora right when she states: “The hubris of it, thinking I could be a decent human being and a valuable member of family and society, and still create! Absurd.”
I hope you will choose to discover and experience this magnificent cerebral thriller for yourself. If this review has piqued your interest, I assure you that you will not be disappointed. The Upstairs Woman deserves every one of its five stars.
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LibraryThing member missizicks
Wow. That was quite something. I bought this book laughingly after I read a review in the Guardian. I am an angry woman. I thought it would be interesting to read a story about an angry woman. I didn't expect to meet myself. Or at least an understanding of the rage I feel and have felt for as long
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as I've had the ability to name it. The things I like about this book are the recognition that we all want to be known, that inner lives are dangerous, and that when faced with our own mediocrity we instinctively look for someone else to blame. I was consumed by reading this book. It's maybe not for everyone, but I loved it. Show Less
LibraryThing member karieh
I’d read and enjoyed Jennifer Egan’s previous book, “The Emperor’s Children” and looked forward to reading “The Woman Upstairs”. Although at times I was frustrated with the main character, Nora, Egan’s writing style kept me in thrall. It is almost as if you are lulled into
Nora, an unmarried schoolteacher, refers to herself as “The Woman Upstairs”. She carefully constructs this persona for herself. At times it seems as if this role is once she has been forced to accept by the circumstances of her life. “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 and is eighteen months older.”…“Instead you gush about how good she is at putting on nail polish or at talking to boys….” “…and you put yourself down whenever you can so that people won’t feel threatened by you, so they’ll like you, because you wouldn’t want them to know that in your heart, you are proud…” “It doesn’t ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.”
She acts the way she does because of who she feels she is – and creates a self-fulfilling destiny. “…it’s important, when you’re the Woman Upstairs, never to think of yourself – but never, do you understand? – as alone or forlorn or, God help us, wanting. It will not do. It cannot be. It is the end.”
Until, that is, she meets the family that will change her – thus making her change her life. Reza Shahid is a new child in her class. Nora is drawn to him, and then to his parents, Sirena and Skandar Shahid. A woman, man and child whose existence, personalities, dynamics consume her. She cannot get enough of this family that has entered her life. She befriends Sirena, draws energy and creativity and passion from her. She cares for, watches over and tries to mother Reza, who is a student in her class. And Skandar, Sirena’s husband and Reza’s father…he also becomes an obsession of hers.
“These words, these words are so imprecise, so inadequate: when I speak of love, or desire, or even of longing, the freight of these words is for each of us so particular.” “…longing is a better word than “desire”: it carries its quality of reaching but not attaining, or yearning, of a physical pull that is intense and yet melancholy…”
Nora wants to be these three people. She wants to be part of their family at the same time that she wants to take over each of their roles. Mother, father, child, lover, caregiver, sister, friend. She wants every part of them, every part of their lives. Their lives become hers; she gives up her carefully constructed life in order to add to theirs.
And with most obsessions…this one comes to an unsatisfying end. Unsatisfying for Nora, that is. For the reader – the book ignites.
“I had all this anger. Years of it, decades of it, my very body full of it, bloody with it. And I’d lumbered across the Atlantic to lay it all down upon a doorstep. Almost like blackmail: love me absolutely, or take this s*** from me. I had the mother lode. Yes, the term is apt. It was to be assuaged or offloaded. And yet, while I left their home feeling welcomed, even loved, it was a different, smaller sort of love than I’d wanted – not so much a glacier or a fireworks display as a light shawl against an evening breeze. Recognizably love, but useless in a gale.”
The Nora that the reader is introduced to at the beginning of this book is nothing like the Nora on whom we turn the final page. This new Nora, if she is any sort of “woman upstairs”…is the woman upstairs you don’t want to meet in the middle of the night. This Nora is on fire with new emotions, new passion. Her life is her own now, and the power she now has, the power she demands for and from herself is fascinating. I would give anything to read more about the Nora that has been forged from the fiery blaze of her emotions, the Nora that has travelled through caring, love, obsession, rejection, abandonment and betrayal. It is rare that a book ends on what feels like a new beginning, but this one certainly does.
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complacence by the carefully constructed details and events, making your way steadily through the story, when a razor sharp idea or emotion tears apart the prose and cuts right to the heart of a character.Nora, an unmarried schoolteacher, refers to herself as “The Woman Upstairs”. She carefully constructs this persona for herself. At times it seems as if this role is once she has been forced to accept by the circumstances of her life. “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 and is eighteen months older.”…“Instead you gush about how good she is at putting on nail polish or at talking to boys….” “…and you put yourself down whenever you can so that people won’t feel threatened by you, so they’ll like you, because you wouldn’t want them to know that in your heart, you are proud…” “It doesn’t ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.”
She acts the way she does because of who she feels she is – and creates a self-fulfilling destiny. “…it’s important, when you’re the Woman Upstairs, never to think of yourself – but never, do you understand? – as alone or forlorn or, God help us, wanting. It will not do. It cannot be. It is the end.”
Until, that is, she meets the family that will change her – thus making her change her life. Reza Shahid is a new child in her class. Nora is drawn to him, and then to his parents, Sirena and Skandar Shahid. A woman, man and child whose existence, personalities, dynamics consume her. She cannot get enough of this family that has entered her life. She befriends Sirena, draws energy and creativity and passion from her. She cares for, watches over and tries to mother Reza, who is a student in her class. And Skandar, Sirena’s husband and Reza’s father…he also becomes an obsession of hers.
“These words, these words are so imprecise, so inadequate: when I speak of love, or desire, or even of longing, the freight of these words is for each of us so particular.” “…longing is a better word than “desire”: it carries its quality of reaching but not attaining, or yearning, of a physical pull that is intense and yet melancholy…”
Nora wants to be these three people. She wants to be part of their family at the same time that she wants to take over each of their roles. Mother, father, child, lover, caregiver, sister, friend. She wants every part of them, every part of their lives. Their lives become hers; she gives up her carefully constructed life in order to add to theirs.
And with most obsessions…this one comes to an unsatisfying end. Unsatisfying for Nora, that is. For the reader – the book ignites.
“I had all this anger. Years of it, decades of it, my very body full of it, bloody with it. And I’d lumbered across the Atlantic to lay it all down upon a doorstep. Almost like blackmail: love me absolutely, or take this s*** from me. I had the mother lode. Yes, the term is apt. It was to be assuaged or offloaded. And yet, while I left their home feeling welcomed, even loved, it was a different, smaller sort of love than I’d wanted – not so much a glacier or a fireworks display as a light shawl against an evening breeze. Recognizably love, but useless in a gale.”
The Nora that the reader is introduced to at the beginning of this book is nothing like the Nora on whom we turn the final page. This new Nora, if she is any sort of “woman upstairs”…is the woman upstairs you don’t want to meet in the middle of the night. This Nora is on fire with new emotions, new passion. Her life is her own now, and the power she now has, the power she demands for and from herself is fascinating. I would give anything to read more about the Nora that has been forged from the fiery blaze of her emotions, the Nora that has travelled through caring, love, obsession, rejection, abandonment and betrayal. It is rare that a book ends on what feels like a new beginning, but this one certainly does.
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LibraryThing member TurnThePaige
I feel as though I may be in the minority when I say that I really, really enjoyed this book. Actually quite a bit more than the one I read previous, The Goldfinch. It's not as though that one wasn't extremely enjoyable at some points. It's just that this one was....well, interesting the entire way
It's just a really fascinating psychological explortation, and again, I know I'm in the minority when I say that I genuinely liked Nora's voice. She has some very clear faults, of course, and definiteley comes unhinged a bit, but she, as she presents herself on the very first page, is "an angry woman," and quite honestly, it seems that I seldom read books from the perspective of angry women, or rather, women willing to present themselves so openly as angry. And I honestly wonder if, had the narrator been a man, people who have reviewed this book would throw around the terms "unhinged" and "crazy" and "delusional" as casually as they have. I only used the former very hesitantly, as I don't think it's the most accurate word.
In additon to all of this, I will say that the ending of the novel genuinely surprised me, and I really, really liked it.
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through. The plot is essentially that this wannabe professional artist, schoolteacher Nora, becomes obsessed with the family of one of her students, Reza. The novel explores her journey with this family and asks very interesting questions about what is real and what isn't. It's also quite narrow in scope, very limited to Nora's musings as she is going through her experiences with this family (which I really liked, because my previous read wasn't "narrow," at all).It's just a really fascinating psychological explortation, and again, I know I'm in the minority when I say that I genuinely liked Nora's voice. She has some very clear faults, of course, and definiteley comes unhinged a bit, but she, as she presents herself on the very first page, is "an angry woman," and quite honestly, it seems that I seldom read books from the perspective of angry women, or rather, women willing to present themselves so openly as angry. And I honestly wonder if, had the narrator been a man, people who have reviewed this book would throw around the terms "unhinged" and "crazy" and "delusional" as casually as they have. I only used the former very hesitantly, as I don't think it's the most accurate word.
In additon to all of this, I will say that the ending of the novel genuinely surprised me, and I really, really liked it.
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LibraryThing member Schatje
Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher and amateur artist, recounts the events of five years earlier when she was 37 and experienced her “Shahid year.” Disillusioned with how her life has turned out and feeling “unacknowledged and unadmired and unthanked,” she lives a life “of quiet
This is a psychological portrait of the woman upstairs, “the quiet woman . . . who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting” but who “never makes a sound” and so becomes “completely invisible.” “She’s reliable, and organized, and she doesn’t cause any trouble.” She’s “so thoughtful of others” but “nobody thinks of [her] first.” Nora describes herself as all of these, summarizing, “I’m a good girl. I’m a nice girl. I’m a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl.” In her art, Nora builds dioramas depicting sad, lonely and tormented women like Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf; these miniatures obviously reflect how Nora sees her own life.
Everything changes when Nora meets Sirena who, in contrast, builds grand sculptural and video-based installations. The problem, of course, is that it is other people and someone else’s art which are responsible for Nora’s new vitality. Nora is full of self-doubt and requires outside approval: “If nobody at all could or would read in me the signs of worthiness – of artistic worth – then how could I be said to possess them?” She convinces herself that Sirena and Skandar “could convince me of my substance, of my genius, of the significance of my thoughts and efforts.” She clarifies, “It’s not right to say that they made me think more highly of myself; perhaps more accurately, that they allowed me to . . . My lifelong secret certainty of specialness, my precious, hidden specialness, was wakened and fed by them.”
A sense of foreboding permeates the book because it soon becomes clear that her obsession with the family is unhealthy, especially since her interpretation of Sirena and Skandar’s words and actions may be based more on her needs and desires than on reality. Early on, Nora says, “Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality.” This statement raises questions especially when coupled with Nora’s quoting an Avril Lavigne song: “’You were everything, everything that I wanted . . . All this time you were pretending.’” Her descriptions of Sirena are particularly revealing: “If you’re really clever, like Sirena, then you create a persona – or maybe, more disturbingly, you become a person – who, while seeming impressively, convincingly to eschew fakery, is in fact giving people, very consciously, exactly what they want.” She even decides that a good definition of an artist is “a ruthless person.” There is no doubt that something happens because she begins her story by describing her fury: “How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.” She ends on the same note: “My anger is prodigious. My anger is colossus.” Much of the interest of the book is trying to guess what lead to this “great boil of rage like the sun’s fire” when initially the year with the Shahids is “paradisiac” and “blissful.”
Many of Nora’s emotions and desires will resonate with readers. Unfortunately, I found Nora’s self-absorption and neediness and tendency towards self-pity rather pathetic. She goes on and on, page after page. In addition, sometimes she is too willfully blind. For example, she is irked by her aunt: “It had always been faintly effronting to me, the way Aunt Baby claimed our family lives as if they were her own.” Yet she doesn’t see the irony of later interpreting Reza’s gift of a smile “as if he were my own son.” Does confronting one’s mediocrity have to be tedious?
I appreciated the many literary allusions, both direct and indirect, and the book’s examination of the theme of appearance/fantasy and reality, but Nora’s journey of self-discovery about “the lies [she’d] persistently told [herself] these many years” is not totally convincing.
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desperation” until the Shahid family arrives from Paris. Reza shows up in her grade three class and soon she meets his parents: Sirena, an artist gaining fame, and Skandar, a visiting university professor. The three are glamorous and exotic and worldly, all the things she has wanted for herself. Nora finds herself wanting “a full and independent engagement with each of them” though a friend tells her she is “in love with Sirena but want[s] to fuck her husband and steal her child.” She soon shares a studio with Sirena, babysits Reza, and has long, philosophical conversations with Skandar and through them gains a newfound interest in and engagement with the world. But the three are in Massachusetts for only a year . . . This is a psychological portrait of the woman upstairs, “the quiet woman . . . who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting” but who “never makes a sound” and so becomes “completely invisible.” “She’s reliable, and organized, and she doesn’t cause any trouble.” She’s “so thoughtful of others” but “nobody thinks of [her] first.” Nora describes herself as all of these, summarizing, “I’m a good girl. I’m a nice girl. I’m a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl.” In her art, Nora builds dioramas depicting sad, lonely and tormented women like Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf; these miniatures obviously reflect how Nora sees her own life.
Everything changes when Nora meets Sirena who, in contrast, builds grand sculptural and video-based installations. The problem, of course, is that it is other people and someone else’s art which are responsible for Nora’s new vitality. Nora is full of self-doubt and requires outside approval: “If nobody at all could or would read in me the signs of worthiness – of artistic worth – then how could I be said to possess them?” She convinces herself that Sirena and Skandar “could convince me of my substance, of my genius, of the significance of my thoughts and efforts.” She clarifies, “It’s not right to say that they made me think more highly of myself; perhaps more accurately, that they allowed me to . . . My lifelong secret certainty of specialness, my precious, hidden specialness, was wakened and fed by them.”
A sense of foreboding permeates the book because it soon becomes clear that her obsession with the family is unhealthy, especially since her interpretation of Sirena and Skandar’s words and actions may be based more on her needs and desires than on reality. Early on, Nora says, “Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality.” This statement raises questions especially when coupled with Nora’s quoting an Avril Lavigne song: “’You were everything, everything that I wanted . . . All this time you were pretending.’” Her descriptions of Sirena are particularly revealing: “If you’re really clever, like Sirena, then you create a persona – or maybe, more disturbingly, you become a person – who, while seeming impressively, convincingly to eschew fakery, is in fact giving people, very consciously, exactly what they want.” She even decides that a good definition of an artist is “a ruthless person.” There is no doubt that something happens because she begins her story by describing her fury: “How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.” She ends on the same note: “My anger is prodigious. My anger is colossus.” Much of the interest of the book is trying to guess what lead to this “great boil of rage like the sun’s fire” when initially the year with the Shahids is “paradisiac” and “blissful.”
Many of Nora’s emotions and desires will resonate with readers. Unfortunately, I found Nora’s self-absorption and neediness and tendency towards self-pity rather pathetic. She goes on and on, page after page. In addition, sometimes she is too willfully blind. For example, she is irked by her aunt: “It had always been faintly effronting to me, the way Aunt Baby claimed our family lives as if they were her own.” Yet she doesn’t see the irony of later interpreting Reza’s gift of a smile “as if he were my own son.” Does confronting one’s mediocrity have to be tedious?
I appreciated the many literary allusions, both direct and indirect, and the book’s examination of the theme of appearance/fantasy and reality, but Nora’s journey of self-discovery about “the lies [she’d] persistently told [herself] these many years” is not totally convincing.
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LibraryThing member Debra_Armbruster
I was on the fence with this one (3 or 4 stars) until the end.
I picked up _The Woman Upstairs_ after hearing about it in a critical article about _The Goldfinch_. TWU was recommended as a great book from this past year that most readers had not heard of. I figured I would give it a try.
_The Woman
Nora, the novel's protagonist, a single, childless elementary school teacher in her late 30's, is quietly dissatisfied with her life. She is forever the friend, the dutiful daughter - rather than the artist and passionate woman she had imagined she would grow up to be. Nora's role as the forgettable "woman upstairs" began as a young girl, when she was first obsessed with living behind the good-girl mask, realizing that, once affixed, it could not be removed without people around her knowing that she wasn't necessarily "nice" all the time. Fast-forward to high school and college, where Nora dreams of becoming an artist (with all of the stereotyped glamor attached) but, due to her own fear and the need to appease those around her, never fulfills. Instead, she becomes a third grade teacher, living in the same Boston suburb she has lived in before, taking no husband, having no children, quietly (and sporadically) working on her agonizingly detailed miniatures of suffering female artists...until the Shahid family comes to town.
There are some truly trying aspects of this book, yet all serve the overall design. It is peopled with emotional cripples - both Nora and the adult Shahids- Skandar and Sirena. Nora vacillates between intelligent and observant to whiny and absurdly obtuse. I wanted to throw the book at her - a difficult feat to do while reading her story - and wondered when, if ever, she'd grow into the knowledge that she had her own worth and that the people she chose to surround herself with (the notable exception being Didi) did not act like the "dear friends" the professed to be. You watch Nora make the same blunders over and over again, feel her awkwardness in yourself (Try reading this book while trying to network/meeting new people at your brand new grad program! I second-guessed everything I did for a solid week!); a level of discomfort that I had not felt while reading for some time, yet relished when I did.
I was on the fence about this novel (and by extension Ms. Messud's storytelling and vision) until the final chapter. Boy, did it go out with a bang! Messud brings us 'round again to the sentiments expressed in the book's beginning. We feel Nora's rage justified at last, and see a scene that I generally feel to be gratuitous and cliched in books revolving around repressed women, own it's importance.
Worth the read, regardless of your desire to slap Nora.
I picked up _The Woman Upstairs_ after hearing about it in a critical article about _The Goldfinch_. TWU was recommended as a great book from this past year that most readers had not heard of. I figured I would give it a try.
_The Woman
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Upstairs_ centers around the theme of unfulfilled dreams. It is at times uncomfortable, and at others, encouraging. Of course, reading this book in my late 30's, trained as a teacher, without children but, with the nickname "Mouse", may have skewed my reaction. Maybe...Nora, the novel's protagonist, a single, childless elementary school teacher in her late 30's, is quietly dissatisfied with her life. She is forever the friend, the dutiful daughter - rather than the artist and passionate woman she had imagined she would grow up to be. Nora's role as the forgettable "woman upstairs" began as a young girl, when she was first obsessed with living behind the good-girl mask, realizing that, once affixed, it could not be removed without people around her knowing that she wasn't necessarily "nice" all the time. Fast-forward to high school and college, where Nora dreams of becoming an artist (with all of the stereotyped glamor attached) but, due to her own fear and the need to appease those around her, never fulfills. Instead, she becomes a third grade teacher, living in the same Boston suburb she has lived in before, taking no husband, having no children, quietly (and sporadically) working on her agonizingly detailed miniatures of suffering female artists...until the Shahid family comes to town.
There are some truly trying aspects of this book, yet all serve the overall design. It is peopled with emotional cripples - both Nora and the adult Shahids- Skandar and Sirena. Nora vacillates between intelligent and observant to whiny and absurdly obtuse. I wanted to throw the book at her - a difficult feat to do while reading her story - and wondered when, if ever, she'd grow into the knowledge that she had her own worth and that the people she chose to surround herself with (the notable exception being Didi) did not act like the "dear friends" the professed to be. You watch Nora make the same blunders over and over again, feel her awkwardness in yourself (Try reading this book while trying to network/meeting new people at your brand new grad program! I second-guessed everything I did for a solid week!); a level of discomfort that I had not felt while reading for some time, yet relished when I did.
I was on the fence about this novel (and by extension Ms. Messud's storytelling and vision) until the final chapter. Boy, did it go out with a bang! Messud brings us 'round again to the sentiments expressed in the book's beginning. We feel Nora's rage justified at last, and see a scene that I generally feel to be gratuitous and cliched in books revolving around repressed women, own it's importance.
Worth the read, regardless of your desire to slap Nora.
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LibraryThing member PattyLouise
The Woman Upstairs
By
Claire Messud
My "in a nutshell" summary...
Nora is a primary grade teacher whom everyone loves. She "gets" kids. She is an artist, too. She is at a frustrating point in her life and then she meets the Shahid family.
My thoughts after reading this book...
OMG...I loved the idea of
Nora teaches third grade and loves it, loves her class, loves her art...but doesn't really love her life. She's 40 ish, childless...not married and she never thought that she would be leading the life that she is leading. Her life doesn't seem that awful...she has friends and family and her art but the more I learned about Nora the more weird she became. She gets a new student...Reza...different and exotic...she sort of really cares about him and then meets his mother and cares about her and finally meets his father and cares about him. She is literally in love with the entire Shahid family. She probably gets too close to them. She goes to dinner at their home, she shares a studio with Reza's mother, she even babysits Reza. On her babysitting nights Reza's father always walks her home and she gets close to him. All of this closeness really bothered me...it's not very normal for a teacher and a student's family to be this tight. And it really doesn't end all that well.
You will have to read it to see how and why.
What I loved about this book...
I loved the teacher part of Nora. I loved reading about Nora's childhood and about her mother.
What I did not love...
I really was suspicious and leery of Nora's relationship with this family. Was she so needy that she couldn't respect normal boundaries! Yes...she really was! By the end of the book I didn't care about Nora...she made ridiculous choices and I didn't want to care about her life.
And in real life...there's no time to spend day after day in a studio...real teachers can't skip faculty meetings...and...and...what was she thinking when she took her class on a field trip to her studio!
I kind of think she deserved this ending. I ended the book still not liking Nora.
Final thoughts...
I wanted to love this book but I did not love it. I liked it, admired the author's writing, and enjoyed parts of the story. Nora wasn't who I thought she was going to be.
By
Claire Messud
My "in a nutshell" summary...
Nora is a primary grade teacher whom everyone loves. She "gets" kids. She is an artist, too. She is at a frustrating point in her life and then she meets the Shahid family.
My thoughts after reading this book...
OMG...I loved the idea of
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this book before I even got into it! Did it help that I taught primary grades and knew every single thing that Nora was talking about? I loved this part of the book!Nora teaches third grade and loves it, loves her class, loves her art...but doesn't really love her life. She's 40 ish, childless...not married and she never thought that she would be leading the life that she is leading. Her life doesn't seem that awful...she has friends and family and her art but the more I learned about Nora the more weird she became. She gets a new student...Reza...different and exotic...she sort of really cares about him and then meets his mother and cares about her and finally meets his father and cares about him. She is literally in love with the entire Shahid family. She probably gets too close to them. She goes to dinner at their home, she shares a studio with Reza's mother, she even babysits Reza. On her babysitting nights Reza's father always walks her home and she gets close to him. All of this closeness really bothered me...it's not very normal for a teacher and a student's family to be this tight. And it really doesn't end all that well.
You will have to read it to see how and why.
What I loved about this book...
I loved the teacher part of Nora. I loved reading about Nora's childhood and about her mother.
What I did not love...
I really was suspicious and leery of Nora's relationship with this family. Was she so needy that she couldn't respect normal boundaries! Yes...she really was! By the end of the book I didn't care about Nora...she made ridiculous choices and I didn't want to care about her life.
And in real life...there's no time to spend day after day in a studio...real teachers can't skip faculty meetings...and...and...what was she thinking when she took her class on a field trip to her studio!
I kind of think she deserved this ending. I ended the book still not liking Nora.
Final thoughts...
I wanted to love this book but I did not love it. I liked it, admired the author's writing, and enjoyed parts of the story. Nora wasn't who I thought she was going to be.
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LibraryThing member RDHawk6886
If you are middle aged, the book grabs you by the lapels, shakes you and says I am talking to you. Underlying the larger story developments is the question of whether you believe that you have accomplished living your life with purpose and meaning. Messud does an excellent job of creating a loss of
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personal identity to that of a stronger personality; the emotion of wanting to be singularly loved, love's ability to shroud exploitation. Three quarters of this novel are so convincing and like no other. I found the reveal to be a fail, in some respects I thought the betrayal could have been accomplished with either more or less, but in the end it did not feel like it belonged with the rest of the novel. Still a strong recommend. Show Less
LibraryThing member klib315
Intense. A lot of "in her head" dialog. But I think it was brilliantly written. I listened to the audio book, a great performance by Cassandra Campbell, including believable Italian & Lebanese accents.
LibraryThing member lisapeet
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
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believable. Show Less
LibraryThing member daisyq
I loved the anger of the first chapter; the rest of the book never quite lived up to this for me. I didn't find the story of how Nora came to be angry as interesting as the rage itself, and I would possibly have cared more about what she actually did following the events in the novel.
The story
The story
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itself felt oddly paced: very drawn-out at first, and then the ending felt rushed. Show Less
LibraryThing member bowedbookshelf
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
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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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!
["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>
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LibraryThing member RobynELee
An uncomfortable book that I may admire, but did not enjoy. So is it enough to read novels to appreciate their literary merits, or do we need to be engaged, entertained, or inspired? Since I am not an academic, I suppose I can mostly read for pleasure and skim novels such as this in the future.
LibraryThing member Bookmarque
This is another book that seems to divide opinions into love it or hate it camps. I didn’t react that strongly to it, but it wasn’t a bad book and I enjoyed the slow burn of the narrative. I think it had a lot to say about a subject not easily made into the dramatic without venturing into the
Chances are though, she’ll do nothing. And if she did attempt to right the wrong or even just get a bit of her own back, I can’t imagine it will upset Sirena and Skandar. Nora’s vision of them makes me think they probably laughed behind her back a lot, which makes me angry. Granted, Sirena is an artist who dares. Who thinks big and creates out loud. Nora’s art is quiet and so introverted it might as well not even exist at all. Comparing it to Persian Miniatures is a bit of a stretch, because diorama boxes are pretty childish, as if she’s showing her students what their art projects could be if they just spent a little more time inside that Kleenex box. They suit her though and the confined life she’s lead. Circumstances or not, she’s allowed this to happen. Nora’s world is small and proscribed and correct. She’s just not cut out for loud and angry and so that’s what makes me doubt she did anything at all while it possessed her.
Some reviewers wonder if the friendship Nora described was even real. For her, I think it was, and even if it was faked on Sirena’s part, the illusion of it was there and so I think that validates Nora’s feeling of betrayal. If Sirena just fed her a line and made her act the fool for the sake of her ego and her art, it was a shame Nora couldn’t spot it. The babysitting was the real indicator of Nora’s status; a servant. Also the fact that no one called her to follow up after Reza’s run-in with the bully. She should have taken the hint. She wasn’t a collaborator or a partner even if that’s how Sirena used her in the studio or over coffee. Nora yearned to be the center of someone’s life so much that she couldn’t see she was really kept at arm’s length and that was sad and frustrating at the same time. I wanted her to stop being so available to these people. To not schedule her life around them, but she couldn’t help herself. Each individual represented something she wanted for herself; to be a stunning artist, to have an attractive and accomplished husband, to have a child as luminous and sensitive as Raza. Having each of them vicariously was as close as she could come. In the end, it was her undoing.
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cliched. That is womens’ anger. Usually in fiction an angry woman quickly becomes a crazy one. A criminal one. A violent one. One to be feared, pitied and locked away. Maybe Nora isn’t angry enough to become those things, but she has a perfect right to be so. As soon as certain elements came into play, I knew what the upshot would be and the form of Sirena’s betrayal. Because we aren’t told how Nora’s anger will manifest itself, who knows, maybe she does become the madwoman in the attic instead of just the woman upstairs, but I like imagining what she might do.Chances are though, she’ll do nothing. And if she did attempt to right the wrong or even just get a bit of her own back, I can’t imagine it will upset Sirena and Skandar. Nora’s vision of them makes me think they probably laughed behind her back a lot, which makes me angry. Granted, Sirena is an artist who dares. Who thinks big and creates out loud. Nora’s art is quiet and so introverted it might as well not even exist at all. Comparing it to Persian Miniatures is a bit of a stretch, because diorama boxes are pretty childish, as if she’s showing her students what their art projects could be if they just spent a little more time inside that Kleenex box. They suit her though and the confined life she’s lead. Circumstances or not, she’s allowed this to happen. Nora’s world is small and proscribed and correct. She’s just not cut out for loud and angry and so that’s what makes me doubt she did anything at all while it possessed her.
Some reviewers wonder if the friendship Nora described was even real. For her, I think it was, and even if it was faked on Sirena’s part, the illusion of it was there and so I think that validates Nora’s feeling of betrayal. If Sirena just fed her a line and made her act the fool for the sake of her ego and her art, it was a shame Nora couldn’t spot it. The babysitting was the real indicator of Nora’s status; a servant. Also the fact that no one called her to follow up after Reza’s run-in with the bully. She should have taken the hint. She wasn’t a collaborator or a partner even if that’s how Sirena used her in the studio or over coffee. Nora yearned to be the center of someone’s life so much that she couldn’t see she was really kept at arm’s length and that was sad and frustrating at the same time. I wanted her to stop being so available to these people. To not schedule her life around them, but she couldn’t help herself. Each individual represented something she wanted for herself; to be a stunning artist, to have an attractive and accomplished husband, to have a child as luminous and sensitive as Raza. Having each of them vicariously was as close as she could come. In the end, it was her undoing.
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LibraryThing member ahgonzales
I loved this book. The writing was fantastic; very conversational and natural, which made it an easy read. Though Nora, the main character, starts by describing her anger, the book didn't feel very angry at all. It was about experiences and how you become the person you are in the moment. In
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particular, how each experience can mean something different to each person. I thought the themes of being an artist, in particular a "real" artist, is often played out in one's head and mirrored in the politics of galleries and critics. But that part I felt was very true - how Nora identifies the performative aspects of what it can mean to be a successful artist. There is a level of selfishness, of networking and charisma, that is needed to move forward in art circles. I related to how Nora constantly questioned, not only if her art was "real," but also what it meant, why she made it, and the comparison to others. Beautiful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in feminist themes and art. Show Less
LibraryThing member ccayne
Dreadful and claustrophobic. I like the Emperor's Children and see this novel as a tremendous waste of time and talen.
LibraryThing member thewanderingjew
The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud
This is the story of someone who believes she is not worthy of notice. She believes herself to be part of a class of people who don’t deserve to dream, people who are not memorable, but instead, believe themselves to be unsuccessful, mediocre and invisible in the
When the Shahids, a Lebanese family, move to town from Paris, temporarily, and their child enters the school system, becoming Nora’s student, she is completely enthralled with them. Reza is 8-years-old. His mother Sirena is a successful artist and his father, Skandar, a very attractive man, is a professor and a lecturer. Nora is a frustrated artist who has never followed her dreams, and she “adopts” this family. Nora begins to live vicariously through her new found friends’ lives and then becomes intimately involved with them. With Sirena, she rents a studio and returns to her creative side, once again making model rooms of famous historic personages, and together, they work on Serina’s latest project, “Wonderland”. One night, believing she is alone in the studio, Nora takes some pretty risqué photos of herself, in conjunction with the room she is building. She is imagining a life for the character who lives in the room she is creating, and she abandons herself to the experience, snapping “out of character” photos of herself, in order to record it.
When Sirena and her family return to Paris, Nora feels the loss deeply. After many years, she visits them there and discovers she was betrayed by Sirena and perhaps, even Skandar. She understands this, at first, as the way “the woman upstairs” is treated, as a non-entity, as someone unnoticed, and therefore, not someone who is thought about in terms of feelings or consequences. She is simply there for their amusement and is unimportant. It is at this point in her life that her anger becomes fierce and palpable, but this anger, rather than creating a sense of depression and helplessness, makes her realize that she no longer needs to be afraid to live, that indeed, she must conquer her fears and forge ahead. She had entertained fantasies about her friend and her friend’s husband and dreamed that their son was hers, as well. She had believed that they embraced her as family, but she had over-reacted, and she had over identified with the Shahids, as she had with others. She had been living vicariously in her imaginings, through the lives of others, rather than her own.
Nora believed we were all lost in a world that wasn’t real, a world of appearances, and she didn’t entertain the idea of hope for a better day, a more fulfilling time in her life, rather she mocked those who told her otherwise, until she was betrayed so completely that her anger finally woke her up and gave her the courage to face life and live. This is a story about a woman who needed to come face to face with the charades that people play and with their disloyalty and phoniness, in order to find the truth and reality in her own life.
The book illuminates how we see each other, each with a different lens. What we see with our eye and feel with our minds and hearts is completely skewed by our personal life experiences and our environment. We all bring a different viewpoint and a different evaluation of situations to the table, based on our pasts. Probably, no two observations or reactions to the same experience or incident will be exactly the same.
This was not my kind of book. There were sexual overtones of deviance that seemed contrived and irrelevant and I did not really identify or become invested in any of the character’s lives. However, the writer has a way with words and that is praiseworthy.
This is the story of someone who believes she is not worthy of notice. She believes herself to be part of a class of people who don’t deserve to dream, people who are not memorable, but instead, believe themselves to be unsuccessful, mediocre and invisible in the
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eyes of the world. This is the story of Nora Eldridge, a single woman, spinsterish, who no longer thinks about a future that includes a happy home, a future that is hopeful and prosperous. She resigns herself to the fact that she is nothing, if not ordinary. When the Shahids, a Lebanese family, move to town from Paris, temporarily, and their child enters the school system, becoming Nora’s student, she is completely enthralled with them. Reza is 8-years-old. His mother Sirena is a successful artist and his father, Skandar, a very attractive man, is a professor and a lecturer. Nora is a frustrated artist who has never followed her dreams, and she “adopts” this family. Nora begins to live vicariously through her new found friends’ lives and then becomes intimately involved with them. With Sirena, she rents a studio and returns to her creative side, once again making model rooms of famous historic personages, and together, they work on Serina’s latest project, “Wonderland”. One night, believing she is alone in the studio, Nora takes some pretty risqué photos of herself, in conjunction with the room she is building. She is imagining a life for the character who lives in the room she is creating, and she abandons herself to the experience, snapping “out of character” photos of herself, in order to record it.
When Sirena and her family return to Paris, Nora feels the loss deeply. After many years, she visits them there and discovers she was betrayed by Sirena and perhaps, even Skandar. She understands this, at first, as the way “the woman upstairs” is treated, as a non-entity, as someone unnoticed, and therefore, not someone who is thought about in terms of feelings or consequences. She is simply there for their amusement and is unimportant. It is at this point in her life that her anger becomes fierce and palpable, but this anger, rather than creating a sense of depression and helplessness, makes her realize that she no longer needs to be afraid to live, that indeed, she must conquer her fears and forge ahead. She had entertained fantasies about her friend and her friend’s husband and dreamed that their son was hers, as well. She had believed that they embraced her as family, but she had over-reacted, and she had over identified with the Shahids, as she had with others. She had been living vicariously in her imaginings, through the lives of others, rather than her own.
Nora believed we were all lost in a world that wasn’t real, a world of appearances, and she didn’t entertain the idea of hope for a better day, a more fulfilling time in her life, rather she mocked those who told her otherwise, until she was betrayed so completely that her anger finally woke her up and gave her the courage to face life and live. This is a story about a woman who needed to come face to face with the charades that people play and with their disloyalty and phoniness, in order to find the truth and reality in her own life.
The book illuminates how we see each other, each with a different lens. What we see with our eye and feel with our minds and hearts is completely skewed by our personal life experiences and our environment. We all bring a different viewpoint and a different evaluation of situations to the table, based on our pasts. Probably, no two observations or reactions to the same experience or incident will be exactly the same.
This was not my kind of book. There were sexual overtones of deviance that seemed contrived and irrelevant and I did not really identify or become invested in any of the character’s lives. However, the writer has a way with words and that is praiseworthy.
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LibraryThing member icolford
Nora Eldridge regards herself as the typical "woman upstairs," the reliable and trustworthy female living alone: the one who, though invisible most of the time, is a reliable buttress for her talented and accomplished friends—who can swoop in and play a supporting role at short notice—but who
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lacks any discernible talent of her own. Approaching forty, Nora has taught elementary school for years, a safe and honorable profession that she pursued at the insistence of her parents. It is a job that exhausts her but also provides comfort and a sense of worth. Nora’s regret is that she gave up her art in order to nurture her career. But when she meets Sirena Shahid, the unashamedly egocentric mother of Reza, one of the children in her class, and a practicing artist who followed her muse, these ambitions are awakened from the state of dormancy where they have languished for more than a decade. The Shahid family is in Cambridge for the year while Sirena's husband Skandar fulfills a contract at the university. Sirena and Nora bond over the child Reza, whose wide-eyed foreignness and physical beauty touch Nora deeply. Once Nora and Sirena become acquainted it does not take long for them to recognize the artistic spirit in one another, and they jointly rent a studio where Nora will work on her dioramas and Sirena, who is on the cusp of international fame, will create her Wonderland, a multi-faceted installation piece encompassing sculpture, photography and video that, though seemingly a pretentious mishmash, somehow works as a profoundly engaging feminist statement. Nora, spellbound by Sirena’s single-minded engagement with her art, works doggedly on her own pieces, and, as the year progresses, is drawn ever deeper into the Shahid family vortex, answering the call during emergencies, assuming the role of a sort of nanny/aunty to Reza, and becoming personally involved with each member of the family in a way that she reluctantly acknowledges is not healthy and potentially even dangerous. But, like an addict, she is unable to distance herself because she is also dependent upon the Shahids for a degree of emotional fulfillment that her everyday life does not give her. When the year ends and the time comes for the Shahids to return home to Paris, they vanish almost without warning, abruptly leaving Nora behind, bereft at the loss. Disconsolate, she retreats into her old life and relinquishes her art yet again. Finally, after several years of intermittent and desultory communications, Nora travels to Paris for a visit, and there, at one of Sirena’s shows, makes a discovery that leaves her breathless and inarticulate with anger. In Nora Eldridge, Claire Messud has created an indelible character, a woman approaching middle age, aware of what she is missing and sensitive to all the traps into which she could fall, but nonetheless willing to throw herself into a relationship that turns out to be something other than what she had been led to believe. The Woman Upstairs is a briskly paced, suspenseful and exquisitely written narrative that dissects one person’s attempt to become whole through connection with another, and who, in the end, gains strength and freedom from an unthinkable betrayal. Show Less
LibraryThing member CasualFriday
I can see why Claire Messud gets a little touchy on the subject of unlikeable characters. Fortunately, unlikeable characters are my favorite kind, so I ate this book up like candy. It is narrated by Nora, a schoolteacher who wants to be an artist, and becomes smitten with fellow Sirena Shahid and
The jacket blurb tells us that the story will end with a “shocking betrayal,” and it is obvious early on that the Shahids are pretty casual in their regard for Nora and that Sirena is a bit of a careless user, but despite all the foreshadowing, I did not see the gut-punch ending coming at all. So in addition to the pleasure of an acute psychological study, there is the pleasure of an ending that left me breathless. All this, and wonderfully unlikeable characters! I’m in heaven.
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her husband and child. Sirena invites Nora to share studio space with her. Tellingly, Nora’s art consists of taking the most powerful female artists imaginable, like Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, and reducing them to miniature dioramas, while Sirena is working on an a large-scale installation destined to rock the art world.The jacket blurb tells us that the story will end with a “shocking betrayal,” and it is obvious early on that the Shahids are pretty casual in their regard for Nora and that Sirena is a bit of a careless user, but despite all the foreshadowing, I did not see the gut-punch ending coming at all. So in addition to the pleasure of an acute psychological study, there is the pleasure of an ending that left me breathless. All this, and wonderfully unlikeable characters! I’m in heaven.
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LibraryThing member Perednia
Collisions between creating and privacy, friendship and art, love and honesty are at the heart of the brutal, passionate and uplifting The Woman Upstairs, the latest novel by Claire Messud.
Uplifting is just about the last word that comes to mind when Nora Eldridge begins her story. She is more
I'd like to blame the world for what I've failed to do, but the failure -- the failure that sometimes washes over me as anger, makes me so angry I could spit -- is all mine, in the end. ... I thought I could get to greatness, to my greatness, by plugging on, cleaning up each mess as it came, the way you're taught to eat your greens before you have dessert.
In putting the record straight about why she is angry, Nora goes back to relate what happened a few years ago when she gave her heart away to three members of the same family. First is her new third grade student, Reza, who catches her eye at the supermarket before he comes to her class; his mother, Italian artist Sirena, who is living the kind of life Nora may have once wanted or thought she wanted; and his father, Skander, an academic who is a quietly charismatic man.
From the beginining, Nora knows she's crossing the line when she realizes how deeply she cares for Reza. When he suffers first one, then two, instances of bullying, Nora crosses the line in taking care of him. Sirena immediately stirs her sympathy and empathy. When Reza's mother suggests that they share the lease on a loft space to create their respective works of art, Nora again crosses the line and jumps at the chance. She babysits for Reza, she takes longer and longer walks with Skander when he walks her home, she starts helping Sirena with her installation. She's way too invested in these people.
Messud displays acute observations about education, art and how people care for each other in this novel. It begins with Nora explaining an aspect of her job, which in turn reveals truths about her:
When they tell me that I "get" kids, I'm worried that they're saying I don't seem quite adult. The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, shares the same dream logic as crazy people's. I see what he means, and because I've learned to be patient with children, to tease out the logic that's always somewhere there, and irrefutable once explained, I've come to understand that grown-ups, mad or sane, ought really to be accorded the same respect. In this sense, nobody is actually crazy, just not understood.
It's fairly obvious that Sirena, whether meaning to or not, is taking advantage of Nora. After all, Nora ia one of those ubiquitous Women Upstairs. They are Barbara Pym's Excellent Women. They are the Maiden Aunts, the Youngish Widows, they are On the Shelf. They are there to serve. That is their function, their role. They are not made to complain or complicate matters. No matter that they once had dreams of becoming an artist, no matter they still feel the weight of their own mothers not having a fulfilling life beyond housekeeping and child-raising duties, that they could have married but realized it would have been the end of their dreams.
This is how Nora is viewed. But she yearns, or how she still yearns.
Nora is someone who wants to be fully understood for who she really is, but she isn't sure that she can trust anyone else to understand her. So she hides. Until she gives her heart away. Even her art is compressed. She tries to make little dioramas of rooms of famous women artists -- Emily Dickenson, Virginia Woolf and Edie Sedgewick. One weekend, Nora completely obliterates the line in her relationship with both Sirena and Skander and believes she is reveling as her true self, as an artist. And it comes back to haunt her in what will be seen by some as a huge betrayal and by others as an artist simply being an artist, using what material is there.
The culmination of Nora's relationship with the family is not much of a surprise. There has been plenty of conversation about ethics and history -- Skander's academic specialty -- and creating art, to warn the reader. And how nothing looks the same to everyone. Much of what is conveyed is quite meta, including Sirena's art, which includes in her installations objects remade of trash:
... lush gardens and jungles made out of household items and refuse: elaborately carved soap primroses, splayed lilies and tulips fashioned out of dyed dishrags and starch, silvery vines of painted and varnished clothesline and foil, precisely and impeccably made. I couldn't quite picture them when she talked about them, but the idea made sense to me: visions of paradise, the otherworldly, the beautiful, and then, when you're in them, up close, you realize that the flowers are mottled by filth and the vines are crumbling and that the gleaming beetles crawling on the waxy leaves are molded bottle tops or old leather buttons with limbs. ... She told me too that latterly she'd made videos of the installations, that the story of the videos was precisely this revelation that the beautiful world was fake, was made of garbage; but that first she had to film it in such a way that it looked wholly beautiful and that sometimes this was hard. And also, she said, narrative was hard: when you made a video, there had to be a story, and a story unfolded over time, in a different way, and didn't always unfold as you wanted it to.
The ultimate beauty of the novel is how it ends. It's not one of those novels that ends without resolution. And it is an ending that makes great sense considering what Nora has revealed of herself all along.
She may be a Woman Upstairs, but one of the ideas that has been consistently presented throughout is that no one should go gentle into that good night. No matter how many times one may argue with and cajole Nora during the novel, this is not an easily imagined resolution. It's a resolution that can make a reader all the happier for having made the journey of reading this novel.
Uplifting is just about the last word that comes to mind when Nora Eldridge begins her story. She is more
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than irritated or even cheesed off. She is furious. Angry isn't volatile enough to describe her scorching, psyche-deep, all-consuming rage. It's part of being a woman, an unmarried woman who teaches young children and who once thought of becoming an artist, a woman who once held an important corporate position and who could have married a man who became a successful attorney. Nora knows this and she knows it's hardly acceptable. This is Nora -- she is honest about how she feels, even when she does things she knows are wrong, and she is about as honest a narrator as one usually sees. Just when it looks like you've caught her being unreliable or just trying to fool herself, she puts the record straight. As when she says:I'd like to blame the world for what I've failed to do, but the failure -- the failure that sometimes washes over me as anger, makes me so angry I could spit -- is all mine, in the end. ... I thought I could get to greatness, to my greatness, by plugging on, cleaning up each mess as it came, the way you're taught to eat your greens before you have dessert.
In putting the record straight about why she is angry, Nora goes back to relate what happened a few years ago when she gave her heart away to three members of the same family. First is her new third grade student, Reza, who catches her eye at the supermarket before he comes to her class; his mother, Italian artist Sirena, who is living the kind of life Nora may have once wanted or thought she wanted; and his father, Skander, an academic who is a quietly charismatic man.
From the beginining, Nora knows she's crossing the line when she realizes how deeply she cares for Reza. When he suffers first one, then two, instances of bullying, Nora crosses the line in taking care of him. Sirena immediately stirs her sympathy and empathy. When Reza's mother suggests that they share the lease on a loft space to create their respective works of art, Nora again crosses the line and jumps at the chance. She babysits for Reza, she takes longer and longer walks with Skander when he walks her home, she starts helping Sirena with her installation. She's way too invested in these people.
Messud displays acute observations about education, art and how people care for each other in this novel. It begins with Nora explaining an aspect of her job, which in turn reveals truths about her:
When they tell me that I "get" kids, I'm worried that they're saying I don't seem quite adult. The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, shares the same dream logic as crazy people's. I see what he means, and because I've learned to be patient with children, to tease out the logic that's always somewhere there, and irrefutable once explained, I've come to understand that grown-ups, mad or sane, ought really to be accorded the same respect. In this sense, nobody is actually crazy, just not understood.
It's fairly obvious that Sirena, whether meaning to or not, is taking advantage of Nora. After all, Nora ia one of those ubiquitous Women Upstairs. They are Barbara Pym's Excellent Women. They are the Maiden Aunts, the Youngish Widows, they are On the Shelf. They are there to serve. That is their function, their role. They are not made to complain or complicate matters. No matter that they once had dreams of becoming an artist, no matter they still feel the weight of their own mothers not having a fulfilling life beyond housekeeping and child-raising duties, that they could have married but realized it would have been the end of their dreams.
This is how Nora is viewed. But she yearns, or how she still yearns.
Nora is someone who wants to be fully understood for who she really is, but she isn't sure that she can trust anyone else to understand her. So she hides. Until she gives her heart away. Even her art is compressed. She tries to make little dioramas of rooms of famous women artists -- Emily Dickenson, Virginia Woolf and Edie Sedgewick. One weekend, Nora completely obliterates the line in her relationship with both Sirena and Skander and believes she is reveling as her true self, as an artist. And it comes back to haunt her in what will be seen by some as a huge betrayal and by others as an artist simply being an artist, using what material is there.
The culmination of Nora's relationship with the family is not much of a surprise. There has been plenty of conversation about ethics and history -- Skander's academic specialty -- and creating art, to warn the reader. And how nothing looks the same to everyone. Much of what is conveyed is quite meta, including Sirena's art, which includes in her installations objects remade of trash:
... lush gardens and jungles made out of household items and refuse: elaborately carved soap primroses, splayed lilies and tulips fashioned out of dyed dishrags and starch, silvery vines of painted and varnished clothesline and foil, precisely and impeccably made. I couldn't quite picture them when she talked about them, but the idea made sense to me: visions of paradise, the otherworldly, the beautiful, and then, when you're in them, up close, you realize that the flowers are mottled by filth and the vines are crumbling and that the gleaming beetles crawling on the waxy leaves are molded bottle tops or old leather buttons with limbs. ... She told me too that latterly she'd made videos of the installations, that the story of the videos was precisely this revelation that the beautiful world was fake, was made of garbage; but that first she had to film it in such a way that it looked wholly beautiful and that sometimes this was hard. And also, she said, narrative was hard: when you made a video, there had to be a story, and a story unfolded over time, in a different way, and didn't always unfold as you wanted it to.
The ultimate beauty of the novel is how it ends. It's not one of those novels that ends without resolution. And it is an ending that makes great sense considering what Nora has revealed of herself all along.
She may be a Woman Upstairs, but one of the ideas that has been consistently presented throughout is that no one should go gentle into that good night. No matter how many times one may argue with and cajole Nora during the novel, this is not an easily imagined resolution. It's a resolution that can make a reader all the happier for having made the journey of reading this novel.
Show Less
LibraryThing member neddludd
Messud is a marvelous writer. However, this work is quite thin on narrative. Not much happens as the heroine, via interior thoughts, seeks to understand why she has never lived fully and whether she possesses genuine artistic talent. She has been scarred by her mother's predicament, and vows never
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to live a stunted life; yet, that is precisely what she does until she is awakened, a la Sleeping Beauty, by a charismatic woman artist, her beautiful son, and her intellectual husband. The heroine idealizes the three, and much of the tale concerns whether they are able to live up to her expectations. Yet, progress is so incremental and internalized that the book actually becomes a dense and not very pleasant slog. Is there a final resolution? Again, the climactic events are disclosed via interior dialogue and one is pleased when the last word appears. Disappointing after The Emperor's Children. Show Less
LibraryThing member shazjhb
I am in two minds about this book. On one level it was surprising and interesting but it was also a bit unrealistic. Keep relationships alive in your head only is a bit much. It was somewhat difficult to visualize the art. Good read. She is an excellent author.
LibraryThing member LissaJ
I am mixed about this book. At times, I really got what Nora, the narrator, was trying to say. She was approaching forty, single and starting to realize how her expectations for her own life have been forgotten. There were times when the book seemed so wise and well written but then the narrator
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would go off on uninteresting tangents that were a chore to read. At other times i just really has no sympathy for her and could care less about her invented dramas. I came away from this book glad that I read it but not blown away by what I read. Show Less
LibraryThing member c.archer
I was excited to find this book available as an ebook through my local library. I knew that it was from a highly acclaimed author, and so I downloaded it and started right in. The beginning didn't seem too bad. The narrator is a middle-aged woman who is unhappy with the way life has gone for her.
Things change when she meet Reza, a new third grade student in her class. He and his family have moved from France for a year for his father's work. Nora meets and becomes enchanted with each of them, particularly the mother, who is an artist with some success in Paris. Their relationships begin innocently enough, but Nora eventually becomes obsessed with each of them. Actual reality is obviously confused with what is going on in her head, and she falls in love with the entire family in a bizarre and not at all healthy way. Eventually she is faced with the inevitable, their returning home and what she sees as an unforgivable betrayal.
I kept reading to try to find something to explain the story or justify the feelings of Nora, but in the end I was just disgusted by her self-pity and fixation on this family. She has placed her last hope for happiness in their hands, but fails to share her feelings with any of them. It just ends up a sad mess for Nora, and a depressing and pointless story. I recommend passing on this title.
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She wanted to become an artist, but ended up a teacher. Her art is still important to her, but it has gained no following and it is mainly just a hobby. When her mother passed away, she was the dutiful daughter who sat with her. Her father is aging and since she is unmarried, she is the one responsible for checking on him. Her dreams are gone, and she is becoming invisible, like the dutiful "woman upstairs", who is always there for others, only to discover that she has lost all opportunities for her own success and fulfillment. Things change when she meet Reza, a new third grade student in her class. He and his family have moved from France for a year for his father's work. Nora meets and becomes enchanted with each of them, particularly the mother, who is an artist with some success in Paris. Their relationships begin innocently enough, but Nora eventually becomes obsessed with each of them. Actual reality is obviously confused with what is going on in her head, and she falls in love with the entire family in a bizarre and not at all healthy way. Eventually she is faced with the inevitable, their returning home and what she sees as an unforgivable betrayal.
I kept reading to try to find something to explain the story or justify the feelings of Nora, but in the end I was just disgusted by her self-pity and fixation on this family. She has placed her last hope for happiness in their hands, but fails to share her feelings with any of them. It just ends up a sad mess for Nora, and a depressing and pointless story. I recommend passing on this title.
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Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2015)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2013)
Scotiabank Giller Prize (Longlist — 2013)
Maine Readers' Choice Award (Longlist — 2014)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Fiction — 2014)
Arab American National Museum Book Award (Honorable Mention — Adult Fiction — 2014)
Boston Globe Best Book (Fiction — 2013)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (General Fiction — 2013)
The Observer Book of the Year (Fiction — 2013)
Notable Books List (Fiction — 2014)
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2013)
Language
Original publication date
2013-04-30
Physical description
320 p.; 5.16 inches
ISBN
0307401170 / 9780307401175
Local notes
fiction