I loved this book the first time I read it, and I absorbed it over the course of a week of travel to Oregon, which was immensely satisfying. I became even more of a champion for The Woman Upstairs when I found out the rest of my book club members were indifferent to it at best, and some of them even disliked it. Messud's feat of writing a feminist novel about contemporary art is truly impressive, because that sounds like an utterly impossible task, and she pulls it off very elegantly. The whole novel reads like a slow-burning thriller, and it gave me the most delicious sense of dread the entire time, and yet it is so undeniably a piece of exquisite literary fiction.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
