The woman upstairs, by Claire Messud

“When you’re the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first.  Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard.   Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all.”  This is the grim reality that Nora Eldridge faces in this novel about art, love, and betrayal.  Nora was supposed to become a Great Artist; instead she teaches third grade and fits her art in where she can in her solitary rooms upstairs.  In her early forties, she feels that life has passed her by.   Then a new boy comes into her class, the strikingly beautiful Reza Shahid, son of a Lebanese father, Skandar, and Italian mother, Sirena.   They have left their home in Paris for a year in Cambridge, where Skandar is at Harvard.  Sirena is a “real” artist – with recognized work and on the cusp of breaking through to real critical acclaim.  Events draw Nora into their close circle where she finds herself falling in love with all of them.   The aptly named Sirena suggests that they share the rent on a large loft studio and Nora begins to get serious about making her own artistic mark.  As the Shahid’s year in Cambridge draws to a close, Nora finds herself abandoned, betrayed, and angry enough to perhaps start to really live.  253 pp.