Messud's The Woman Upstairs and Henriquez' The Great Divide

 The Great Divide

This story set in 1907 explores how the Panama Canal  was built.  There are too many story lines, in my opinion, attempting to show how it affected a diverse group of people.  An intriguing premise but not enough in depth character development for me to get invested in the individual stories. 

There were the fishermen and locals, many of whom were against the Americans and big companies coming in and changing their way of life.  There were two different standards for pay and work for blacks and whites; the American workers and local workers called Gold and Silver for payment and living conditions.

The most interesting story to me was about Ada, the girl who traveled from Barbados to find work.  She had a sick sister who needed an operation so Ada was hellbent to send money back home.  Then it would jump to another story about a doctor from Tennessee who was there for research, a bully of a foreman who took advantage of the local workers, a village of people who were about to be displaced by flooding of their homes for a dam to be built.

It was hard to empathize with any one person or situation as you couldn't get to know them well before we went off to another storyline.  3 stars.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

I have bookmarked so many passages in this book on my Kindle; where would I start to explain the raw emotions and thoughts of Nora Eldridge. She's an elementary school teacher with regrets, as all of us have I'm sure, about choices not made. The road not traveled. Dutiful daughter, dependable Nora, the quiet lady upstairs. Not the great artist with a passionate love life as she'd imagined.

Nora's mother Bella was Italian, an artist, creative and intelligent.  She desperately wanted Nora to go do more, follow her dreams and not be "trapped" in a marriage and dependent on anyone. 

"I always understood that the great dilemma of my mother's life had been to glimpse freedom too late, at too high a price."

In the beginning Nora is talking to us and she is angry.  A barely controlled anger where she spits out her thoughts, regrets, grievances with a fuck you to the world. Not a spoiler, but this dovetails neatly into the end as we learn about her life, assumptions made by her and others and a great betrayal.

Nora falls in love with a family.  Arriving late into her third grade class is Reza Shahid, an adorable little boy Nora comes to love.  She is also enamoured with Reza's mother Sirena and his Lebanese father, a scholar named Skandar.  She is slowly enveloped in their lives, sharing friendship and family time with them - all together and sometimes alone with only Sirena in a shared art studio or Skandar as he walks her home evenings she stays for dinner. They talk as they walk… well actually Skandar does most of the talking about history, philosophy and life. 

Nora and Sirena talk and share their thoughts and goals for their art. Close relationships between all of the Shahid family and Nora. What could go wrong. 

This is a literary fiction I enjoyed very much and will seek out more of Claire Messud's work. 5 stars.........keep me reading :-)