The woman upstairs

Author's name: Claire Masoud

“That’s what it’s like to be a woman upstairs. We grit our teeth. We pull ourselves together. We don’t make a mess, we don’t make mistakes, we don’t call people howling and moaning at 4 a.m. We don’t reveal secrets, even if they’re not appropriate to keep. We turn 40 sneering, we joke about needing martinis and that 40 is the modern-day 30, and neither we nor the others ever say out loud what’s really on our minds: So, I don’t think she’ll ever have kids!” * Nora Eldridge, a woman in her 40s who everyone trusts, yet no one notices, as if she’s invisible, existing only on the margins of other people’s successes. She plays the role of the caring friend, the helpful neighbor, the dedicated teacher, and the artist who always puts her projects on hold. But the arrival of Shahid’s family—Iskander, a Lebanese academic, his wife Serena, an Italian artist, and their son Reda—takes her to another exciting world. And complicated. Nora's happiness pushes her to exceed her limits, until she clashes with Serena's artistic ambition, who doesn't hesitate to do anything, no matter how vile. Then something happens that Nora never expected in her entire life, and she feels something she's never felt before: anger.