Claire Messud

Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long ago abandoned her dream to be a successful artist. Instead she 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, and Nora is drawn into the complex world of his glamorous and cosmopolitan family. As happiness explodes...