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A review by thatjamiea
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
2.0
I read an interview with the author of this book. She was asked what she thought about people disliking Nora. She seemed okay with that. It didn't bother her. People are uncomfortable, she said, with characters they dislike.
This is true, for me. I need a connection with the characters I read about and I made no connections in this book. I liked a few, secondary characters, but the main characters where no one i would like to know and didn't have qualities I'd like to see in myself.
It's not that I was discomforted by Nora's life, though I did feel sad that the things she wanted (children, success) were slipping through her fingers. It was that Nora constantly got it all wrong. In huge ways. A lady crush is okay. We all have had, in our lives, someone we couldn't get enough of. Nora recounts her attraction to Serina as sexual and maybe it was, but I just read as this weird, unrequited lady crush where the object was nice enough, on the surface, while Nora kept driving forward.
It was just a whole book of WTF, I guess. It started to feel like Anna Karenina and I started wishing Nora would just shut up and do something.
She never did.
No confessions or confrontation. She goes on for pages and chapters about her barely contained fury, but there's nothing furious in her actions.
This is true, for me. I need a connection with the characters I read about and I made no connections in this book. I liked a few, secondary characters, but the main characters where no one i would like to know and didn't have qualities I'd like to see in myself.
It's not that I was discomforted by Nora's life, though I did feel sad that the things she wanted (children, success) were slipping through her fingers. It was that Nora constantly got it all wrong. In huge ways. A lady crush is okay. We all have had, in our lives, someone we couldn't get enough of. Nora recounts her attraction to Serina as sexual and maybe it was, but I just read as this weird, unrequited lady crush where the object was nice enough, on the surface, while Nora kept driving forward.
It was just a whole book of WTF, I guess. It started to feel like Anna Karenina and I started wishing Nora would just shut up and do something.
She never did.
No confessions or confrontation. She goes on for pages and chapters about her barely contained fury, but there's nothing furious in her actions.