The Woman Upstairs By Claire Messud

The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, explores the emotional life of Cambridge, Massachusetts schoolteacher Nora Eldridge. Forty-two years old and unmarried, Nora feels an immediate bond with Reza Shahid, a new boy in her 4th grade class. Within weeks, Nora babysits for Reza and shares dinners with his parents. This new family dominates Nora’s thoughts and feelings.

This impressive novel is structured around Nora’s reflections about the unraveling of her relationship with the Shahid family. Nora writes in rich detail about her inner life and acknowledges her maternal feelings toward Reza. She feels an alliance with Sierna, Reza’s mom, because of their shared interest in art and delights in her long discussions with Skandar, Reza’s dad. Her interactions with the family provide Nora with a feeling of connection, contentment and excitement. Then poor communication and bad choices cause irreparable damage to their relationships. There are many betrayals, but the level of consciousness about the betrayals is for the reader to determine.

Messud’s novel explores the bewildering number of factors at work in communication between people. Nora attempts to scrutinize her choices with as much consciousness as she possesses. Her efforts are admirable, but her own unique perspective limits her analysis. The very complexity of human communication frustrates her attempt to understand. As Nora says, “It is the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate. Even when people try to say things, they say them poorly, or obliquely, or they outright lie, sometimes because they are lying to you, but as often because they’re lying to themselves.” 

Messud’s ambitious novel grabbed my attention. It was as if a friend asked me to analyze why a relationship ended. I felt invited to enter and explore the inner world of Nora Eldridge. When the novel ended, I exited her world with empathy.