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Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter, colleague, friend, employee. She teaches at an elementary school where the children and the parents adore her; but her real passion is her art, which she makes alone, unseen.

One day Reza Shahid appears in her classroom: eight years old, a perfect, beautiful boy. Reza's father has a fellowship at Harvard and his mother is a glamorous and successful installation artist. Nora is admitted into their charmed circle, and everything is transformed. Or so she believes. Liberation from her old life is not quite what it seems, and she is about to suffer a betrayal more monstrous than anything she could have imagined.

"Messud is a breathtaking writer ... a beautiful - and beautifully sustained - howl of fresh, fierce, furious rage." - Independent on Sunday

"Comedy, pathos, sadness: nothing seems beyond her. Her new book has all this-and more. The Woman Upstairs is not a pretty read, but that is precisely what makes it so hard to put down." - The Economist

"Messud's prose is a delight ... addictive, memorable, intense" - Financial Times

"This is a faultless, suspenseful novel" - Mail on Sunday

"An unnerving portrait of obsession that makes you nervous about your mousiest of neighbours" - New Statesman