From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
Probably not the best book to read on the cusp of a Major Birthday - Nora is going through a mid-life crisis of sorts, dissatisfied with her life (more about the "what might have beens" than the "what is") when the Shahid family enters her life.
Nora (clearly named after Ibsen's heroine) is a very popular third grade teacher in Cambridge and Reza Shahid is a transfer student from Paris (of Palestinian/Lebanese and Italian descent). After a schoolyard bullying incident, his mother Sirena (no, tha ...more
Nora (clearly named after Ibsen's heroine) is a very popular third grade teacher in Cambridge and Reza Shahid is a transfer student from Paris (of Palestinian/Lebanese and Italian descent). After a schoolyard bullying incident, his mother Sirena (no, tha ...more
When I heard descriptions of the book, I thought that Nora Eldridge lived upstairs from the Shahids, but the Woman Upstairs is a metaphor coined by Nora to describe herself. "We're always upstairs...We're the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound. In our lives of quiet desperation, the woman upstairs is who we are, with or without a goddam
...more
Self-consciously, heavy-handedly literary, but raises some interesting questions.
This is a hard book to rate because I thought that the language was beautiful. However, this was seriously depressing. 37 and your life is over? You can't look forward to anything anymore? You need to become obsessed with some random family? I understand what the author was trying to say but I wasn't a fan.
...more
I have never cared less about a character and what happens to her. Nothing from the first 35 pages grabbed on to me. Such a shame. I love Emperor's Children.
...more
Dec 27, 2012
erin
marked it as to-read
Jan 08, 2013
Lauren
marked it as to-read
Apr 25, 2013
Jen
marked it as to-read
May 09, 2013
Kristin
marked it as to-read
May 16, 2013
Amelia
added it
May 20, 2013
Cindy
marked it as to-read
Aug 01, 2013
Elizabeth
marked it as to-read
Sep 16, 2013
Lara
marked it as to-read
Dec 02, 2013
Meg
marked it as to-read
Dec 03, 2013
Lidia K
marked it as to-read
Feb 17, 2014
Liz
marked it as to-read
Aug 25, 2014
Leah
marked it as dnf
Feb 03, 2016
Lisa
marked it as to-read
Nov 02, 2016
Zack
marked it as to-read
Mar 13, 2025
Ray
marked it as to-read
