08840cam a2200529 4500 235191479 TxAuBib 20140806120000.0 ||||||s2013||||||||||||||||||||||||und|u 9780307913630 0307913635 3153a207-71ba-4650-8312-05ba290a1bdb OverDrive (Reserve ID) 1010903 OverDrive (Product ID) 1010903 OverDrive (Product ID) TxAuBib Messud, Claire, 1966- The Woman Upstairs [Libby]. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2013. Format: OverDrive OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, Filesize: 301MB. Format: OverDrive OverDrive Listen, Filesize: 301MB. Fiction. Literature. HTML:"Fantastic--one of those seemingly small stories that so burst with rage and desire that they barely squeeze between hard covers. The prose is impeccable. . . . Messud writes about happiness, and about infatuation--about love--more convincingly than any author I've encountered in years. She fills [her] protagonist with an inner life so rich and furious that you will never again nod hello in the hall to 'the woman upstairs' without thinking twice. . . Is Nora's entrancement erotic, or bigger and stranger than sex? I'm not telling. Read the book." --Lionel Shriver, National Public Radio, "All Things Considered" "Bracing . . . not so much the story of the road not taken as that of the longed-for road that never appeared. . . . Nora's anger electrifies the narrative, and Messud masterfully controls the tension and pace. In this fierce, feminist novel, the reader serves as Nora's confessor, and it's a pleasure to listen to someone so eloquent, whose insights about how women are valued in society and art are sharp.". HTML:Jenny Shank, Dallas News. HTML: "An elegant winner of a novel . . . quietly, tensely unfolding . . . Remarkably, Messud lets us experience Nora's betrayal as if it were our own, and what finally happens really is a punch in the stomach. Highly recommended.". HTML:Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal. HTML: "Utterly compelling . . . Crisply illuminated.". HTML:Katherine Rowland, Guernica. HTML:"Messud has many gifts as a novelist: She writes well, dramatizes, has a sharp ear, a literary critic's knack for marshaling and reverberating themes and, most crucially, a broad and deep empathy that enables her to portray a wide range of characters from the inside. . . . The Woman Upstairs is first-rate: It asks unsettling, unanswerable questions: How much do those who are not our family or our partners really owe us? How close can we really be to them before we start to become needy or creepy? The characters are fully alive.". HTML:John Broening, The Denver Post. HTML:"Messud is a tremendously smart, accomplished writer, [and] Nora's fury explodes from the very first sentence of The Woman Upstairs. . . . The novel gives a voiceless woman a chance to howl.". HTML:Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor. HTML: "Engrossing . . . Think of her as the woman who leans out: the A student who puts others' needs first, plays by the rules, teaches instead of doing. Through the ensuing drama, which includes one of the more shocking betrayals in recent fiction, Messud raises questions about women's still-circumscribed roles and the price of success." --Kim Hubbard, People (A People's Pick) "Messud's account of [Nora's] search for recognition and release is as tight and vivid as Nora's pent-up passion. I was pulled in.". HTML:Mary Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Messud's crystallization of how it feels to crash into a midlife reckoning that resonated most and haunted me in the days after finishing her mesmerizing novel. . . . It boils and 'burns,' and Messud gives us a double whammy to ensure we feel the pangs of midlife. . . . Messud is most interested in the collision between our inner lives and our reality. . . . While it was Messud's achingly beautiful characters that drew me in, it was her portrait of an inner life free to swell, untethered to the realities of children, a spouse and a mortgage that made me think. Seeing Nora live so obsessively in her self-made dioramas in search of joy made me find refuge. For those who live in leafy Cambridge surrounded by alluring visiting intellectuals from afar, students and Somerville artists, it must be said that there is a great writer of our times in our midst who is a nice girl, who never walked out on a friend. Just don't get her angry.". HTML:Heidi Legg, The Huffington Post. "Clear-eyed . . . a passionate and skillful description of female ambition and women artists at work . . . Like Messud herself, Nora knows some women need to stay on fire.". HTML:Britt Peterson, The New Republic. "Spellbinding, psychologically acute . . . Like Emily Dickenson Nora's heightened state lets her see things others miss. [Yet] how much of Nora's fantasy is true--and to what degree the Shahids must share the blame when it's not--is the real subject of Messud's novel. Sh. HTML:Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Cassandra Campbell superbly portrays Nora Eldridge's life of quiet desperation. Teacher, spinster, and dutiful daughter of an ailing father, Nora has the soul of an artist, but her existence has little personal meaning. Her late mother's voice and frustrations also echo in her heart. When Nora meets the Shahid family, she becomes enchanted with them: her charming student, Reza, who is confronted by bullies in the schoolyard; his artist mother, Sirena, who becomes Nora's studio partner and then outgrows their relationship; and his father, Skandar, a Harvard professor who embarks on long walks, and more, with Nora. Campbell portrays the Shahids with mesmerizing personalities and varied accents. Campbell's performance shares the author's passion for these characters and their intimate story. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine. AudioFile Magazine. HTML:From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children, a brilliant new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own. Nora Eldridge, a thirty-seven-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who long ago abandoned her ambition to be a successful artist, has become the "woman upstairs," a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents--dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar and professor at the École Normale Supérleure; and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist--have come to Boston for Skandar to take up a fellowship at Harvard. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who call him a "terrorist," Nora is drawn into the complex world of the Shahid family: she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill--and the devastating cost--of giving in to one's passions.. Media Type: Audiobook. Listen Up Award. Best Audio Books. Notable Books for Adults. The New York Times Best Seller List. Importer Version: 2014-01-08.01 Import Date: 2015-08-06 20:32:58. 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