TY  - BOOK
AU  - Messud,Claire
TI  - The woman upstairs
SN  - 9780307596901 [hardbound]
PY  - 2013///
CY  - New York : 
PB  - Alfred A. Knopf
KW  - Elementary school teachers
KW  - Fiction
KW  - Women artists
KW  - Teacher-student relationships
KW  - Large type books
KW  - Psychological fiction
KW  - lcgft
N2  - Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who long ago abandoned her ambition to be a successful artist, has become the "woman upstairs", a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents - dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar and professor at the École Normale Supérleure; and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist - have come to Boston for Skandar to take up a fellowship at Harvard. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who call him a "terrorist" Nora is drawn into the complex world of the Shahid family: She finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill - and the devastating cost - of giving in to one's passions.


ER  -