The Woman Upstairs

Before I finished the first page of The Woman Upstairs (#328) by Claire Messud, I knew that I didn't want to spend any more time with the angry, profanity-spewing narrator of this book, but since it is our book club's choice for September, I soldiered on.  It wasn't until the very last  few pages that I finally found out just what made Nora Eldridge so furious.  Can't say I blame her, but the payoff wasn't worth the time invested to me.

An unmarried elementary school teacher in her late thirties develops strong crushes on all three members of a family when the boy, Reza, is enrolled in her third grade class in Cambridge.  His father Skandar is a visiting professor at Harvard, and his mother Sirena is an emerging artist.  Nora herself put aside a career in art because she couldn't support herself at it, but she sees Sirena Shahid as the instrument  of her transformation into the artist she always knew she could be when Sirena proposes that they share studio space.  Skandar, the husband, provides intellectual stimulation as well as a brief fling for Nora. It isn't until later that the relationships that Nora treasured and presumed were requited are revealed  for what they truly are in a shocking revelation.

Not that this book is badly written; it's not.  I didn't like it because it is so negative, on oh, so many levels.  I expect it will be a good discussion for our group, but I so wish I had that time back to read something else that wasn't quite so "me" centered.  I also disliked the stereotypes that Messud invokes and perpetuates in her book, "The Woman Upstairs" being the principal one. 

Finally, a very personal peeve.  Ms. Messud seems to have climbed the ladder that comes with every Cambridge dwelling, be it ever so humble, to allow their inhabitants to look down upon their neighbors in Somerville and sneer.  Ah, effete snobbery!   Somerville in her narrative is a place of abandoned buildings, garbage strewn alleyways and live chicken (!!!) shops on one of its main thoroughfares as though the same conditions don't exist equally in Cambridge.  She implies that Davis Square, that haven for foodies, is in Cambridge; it's not.  It's in Somerville.  The producers on the weekly NPR World Music program would be surprised to have their Somerville studio placed in such a dangerous neighborhood.  Enough said.