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 Ecole Normale Superleure; 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.
Dimensions:22 x 240
Author: Messud Claire
ISBN: 9781844087334
Format:
Pages 304