Helpful Score: 1
I liked this book but didnt love it. The main character is interesting and sad and funny and depressing and loving. She is a lot of things and maybe desperate most of all to find a sense of meaning in her life. The ending surprised me but I'm not sure if it will surprise everyone - sometimes I think I'm not paying enough attention! I would recommend this book I just wouldn't advise that it will be one of those "blow you away" type stories though still a good read.
This was a weird book. It was suspenseful, but in a slow kind of way. I wanted to know what would happen next, but there were enough tangents and ramblings from the narrator that it took me several sitting to finish the book. The ending, although abrupt, is a real shocker.
This read is about two women both of whom are self-absorbed. One is the woman upstairs, an elementary teacher, and the other is the wife of visiting professor at Harvard. The first wanted to be an artist but was afraid to take the plunge fearing failure. But she had parents to care for, a mother who dies slowly and a father who needs his daughter's emotional support. She is unmarried. Thus she stays with what is safe, teaching children. The second is free to do as she wishes because she has someone to support her in the event of failure. Such freedom allows her to follow her dreams and use those around her to further her art. She is the woman dominates the teacher who resents it while loving the woman and her family. Cruel, selfish and intent only on achieving fame at all costs, the second woman, Serina, secretly uses her teacher friend and yet, when the teacher discovers Serina's treachery, she is freed to be her own person and live, really live as she wishes without Serina's friendship or any association with the family.
I thought this book replayed the same theme over and over - the lonely life of a middle-aged schoolteacher with aspirations to be an artist who becomes fixated on all three members of a family. She shares an artists' studio with the family's mother, the son is in her third-grade class and the object of her affections, and the father is a one-time lover who easily forgets her. The ending is a surprise and yet shouldn't be since she was so frequently used, albeit willingly, by the family. Nora, the main character, is a study in sadness, and should have elicited my sympathy - that didn't happen. I was relieved to finish this book and surprised that I made it to the end.
