[amazon_link id=”0307743764″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : The Woman Upstairs
Author : Claire Messud
Narrator : Cassandra Campbell
Genre : Contemporary
Publisher : Random House Audio
Listening Length : 11 hours
Rating : 3/5

The book blurb seemed to indicate that “The Woman Upstairs” would be about a lonely spinster and her life as influenced by one charismatic family. Well, it is a pretty fair summary of the book, although post-read I don’t think I got what I expected.

Nora Eldridge is a primary school teacher, a spinster at 37, with nary a boyfriend or family in sight. Nora has once had dreams of becoming an artist, but here she is, stuck in small-town life, as her mother once was. Into her life come the charismatic Shahid family – the son Reza, who is Nora’s student, the mother Sirena, who is a “true artist” with a reputation and established art installations, and the father, Skandar, a good-looking, intelligent scholar pursuing a fellowship at Harvard.

Each member of the Shahid family possesses appealing characteristics, and Nora is drawn to each one in a different way. She becomes a mother figure to Reza, caring for him protectively at school, a fellow artist to Sirena, and a friend to Skandar. Nora’s life is told in first person, by Nora herself. And her telling is detailed, minutely detailed and pretty philosophical. Nora considers herself “the woman upstairs”, the well-behaved, sensible, middle-aged spinster, closeted with her secret desires, living on the fringes of other people’s lives, but never a part of them. Thus begins the story. And on it goes.

Messud provides detailed descriptions of her characters from Nora’s point of view, so Reza, Sirena and Skandar are fleshed out very well. Nora is a bit of a mystery – and an unlikeable one at that. I couldn’t quite fathom why she’d given up on life at 37, and resigned herself to the position of “the woman upstairs” with, hopefully, more than half her life before her. She might have been angry, but I was unmoved by it. I didn’t feel for her, or her situation in life. Moreover, her obsession with the Shahid family has a vaguely incestuous feel to it. Her professed infatuation with every Shahid, with the blurring of edges between each relationship, is uncomfortable to read about. You’d think that knowing about a woman caught in such a predicament would elicit some sympathy, but as it was framed, I couldn’t even bring myself to do that.

If you’ve guessed at my disappointment with this book, you’re spot-on dear reader :-)! I struggled with this book, almost giving up on it, half-way in. I keep waiting for something to happen, but unfortunately “The Woman Upstairs” is a lot of book without any plot. The end when it comes, is a bit of a twist, but not enough to justify the minute intricacy of the book.

I give this novel 3 stars because of the quality of writing, even if that writing failed to have its desired effect. Campbell is a good narrator, and I would listen to her again, and hopefully, that will be a better book.