Sometimes when I start a book I have the feeling the ending is going to be “not good.” This novel by Claire Messud does not disappoint. Nora is a third grade teacher. She wanted to be an artist but her mother thought she should be able to support herself, and wanted her not to end up as she had, an unhappy homemaker. Nora is full of anger. She becomes friends with a new student’s mother who happens to be an artist. (The family is visiting from Paris for a year, the husband a Lebanese lecturer at Cambridge.) They decide to share a studio and become very close, Nora obsessively so. Nora’s art is tiny dioramas. Sirena’s art is huge installations and she is being sought for showing her work. They support and help each other, becoming very close, Nora being considered “family.”
Throughout the book, I was unsure if Nora’s telling is reality or her skewed vision of reality. I won’t spoil the ending but it is indeed “not good.”