'Riveting... Messud is adept at evoking complex psychological territory... She is interested in the identities that women construct for themselves, and in the maddening chasm that often divides intensity of aspiration from reality of achievement' The New Yorker
Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter, colleague, friend, employee. She teaches at an elementary school where the children and the parents adore her; but her real passion is her art, which she makes alone, unseen.
One day Reza Shahid appears in her classroom: eight years old, a perfect, beautiful boy. Reza's father has a fellowship at Harvard and his mother is a glamorous and successful installation artist. Nora is admitted into their charmed circle, and everything is transformed. Or so she believes. Liberation from her old life is not quite what it seems, and she is about to suffer a betrayal more monstrous than anything she could have imagined.
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 9781844087334
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 223 g
Dimensions: 198 x 160 x 22 mm
Messud is a breathtaking writer ... a beautiful - and beautifully sustained - howl of fresh, fierce, furious rage. - Independent on Sunday
Comedy, pathos, sadness: nothing seems beyond her. Her new book has all this-and more. The Woman Upstairs is not a pretty read, but that is precisely what makes it so hard to put down. - The Economist
Messud's prose is a delight ... addictive, memorable, intense - Lionel Shriver, Financial Times
This is a faultless, suspenseful novel - Mail on Sunday
An unnerving portrait of obsession that makes you nervous about your mousiest of neighbours - Lionel Shriver, New Statesman
I received this book as a 'lucky dip' from Waterstones' 'Read & Review' scheme. I'd never heard of it - or the author - and I was slightly doubtful when I started to read it but I... More
I picked this up by accident, and then couldn't put it down again. An interesting story of a woman who falls in love with a whole family and their lives become enmeshed with hers. The first chapter I loved... More
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