Definitely not a novel for everyone; it's not even a very enjoyable novel. There's no joy, but what a voice. In the first pages the seething and angry attitude of Nora made me smile in its vicious rendering. The story of a woman who considers herself wholly unconsidered by most people, the titular woman upstairs who lives life on the blurry edges of everyone else's, she who is single, nearing middle age (though she considers 37 to be middle age which is weird?) and lives alone as an elementary teacher. People ascribe to her boring sentiments like being kind and always doing the right thing and never going against the grain. But her inner self is all, but I'm an artist!

When she meets the mother of one of her young students, a working artist named Sirena, she begins to live a different life, at least inwardly. Still playing up her woman upstairs facade, and the journey is interesting even if you don't like Nora. She's not likable, but I felt for her at times.

It's also a novel in which not that much actually happens despite all the allusions that things will throughout - when we get to those mentioned events they are rather small. And perhaps that's the point: to Nora, these are the most intense moments of her life, and to us, well, we always want bigger, more dramatic events in our fiction. I did enjoy that bit of realistic injection into the fiction; but I don't think many people will like the novel. I did, and I'm still thinking of that creepy Nora voice every now and again in my own head weeks after finishing...