The Woman Upststairs (2013) by Claire Messud

1001 Novels: A Library of America

The Woman Upstairs (2013)

by Claire Messud

Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 13/30

   Another totally insufferable entry from the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list.  Blame it on the protagonist, 42 year old singleton Nora Eldridge, a woman who turns her back on a prominent NYC career and postcard marriage to teach grade school, work on her shitty dioramas (I believe this is the THIRD novel already where a character makes diorama art as adult "serious" art) and complain about her circumstances to her lesbian-couple best friends. 

  Is she happy about the choices she has made?  She is not.  Is she happy about her present circumstances?  No, she is not.  Into this frothy mix of middle aged female displeasure comes Reza Shahid, the child of a French-Arab-Italian couple, the husband of which is working at Harvard University for a year- he's a scholar, but his actual work is never discussed.  The wife of this couple is Sirena Shahid, and obviously her name foreshadows her activity in the book.   Sirena is a real artist, who does installation art.  After bonding over the bullying Reza faces at the school where Nora is her teacher, the two decide to split the costs on a studio rental.

  Huge mistake to check out the Audiobook here- I've begun abandoning 1001 Novels: A Library of America when the protagonist is a YA teen girl, I just can't stand the hours of listening to YA narrators tell their story.  Going forward I'm going to adopt the same procedure for books focused on unhappy middle-aged women.   So boring- every story, the same batch of complaints.  Either they feel trapped by their children and family OR they are consumed with regret over their failure to be trapped by their children and family.    No character on the 1001 Novels list ever reflects on their situation to the tune of, "Well, lots of people are unhappy in the world, I'd better to focus on the positives, and work to change the negatives."  I mean, there wouldn't be a book if that were the case.

   And just to be clear I'm only talking about AMERICAN authors here- none of this applies to books about women from other places.