a book
The Woman Upstairs
Claire Messud · 2013 · 320 pages
Relegated to the status of schoolteacher and friendly neighbor after abandoning her dreams of becoming an artist, Nora advocates on behalf of a charismatic Lebanese student and is drawn into the child's family until his artist mother's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.
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Lionel Shriver
“An obsessive love story in which an eternally overlooked schoolteacher becomes infatuated with one of her students and both his parents. This novel is uncannily riveting and driven by a furious energy, its prose impeccable, its story peculiar. Good peculiar. One of those rare novels whose slightly unhinged, feverish atmosphere I can call up at will years after I read the book.”↗