The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

I liked this book but sometimes found it a bit self important.  Can't explain why exactly, but the author sometimes seemed like she was trying too hard to be reflective.
The main character, Nora (reference to A Doll's House?) is a third grade teacher who bemoans the fact that she is just so ordinary. Her aspirations to be an artist were thwarted by her parents when she was deciding where to go to college.
Nora is taken into the folds of a European family, the Shahids, who comes to Cambridge for a year with their son, who enrolls in Nora's class. His father is Lebanese scholar and his mother an Italian artist of some note. They are in Cambridge for a year.
Nora falls in love with each of them and becomes obsessed with the family - each of them - for different reasons.
Sirena, the artist, mother of Reza and wife of Skandar, asks a lot of Nora, and she acquiesces each time.  They share a studio together and encourage each other's art.
This is a psychological thriller with a very surprise ending.  It's worth the read, for sure, and makes me want to read Messud's other books.

Fin and Lady by Cathleen Schine

Really enjoyed this book - the second one by Schine I have read.
From Westchester Library System Synopsis:

From the author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport , a wise, clever story of New York in the '60sIt's 1964. Eleven-year-old Fin and his glamorous, worldly, older half sister, Lady, have just been orphaned, and Lady, whom Fin hasn't seen in six years, is now his legal guardian and his only hope. That means Fin is uprooted from a small dairy farm in rural Connecticut to Greenwich Village, smack in the middle of the swinging '60s. He soon learns that Lady-giddy, careless, urgent, and obsessed with being free-is as much his responsibility as he is hers. So begins Fin & Lady , the lively, spirited new novel by Cathleen Schine, the author of the bestselling The Three Weissmanns of Westport . Fin and Lady lead their lives against the background of the '60s, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War-Lady pursued by ardent, dogged suitors, Fin determined to protect his impulsive sister from them and from herself. From a writer The New York Times has praised as "sparkling, crisp, clever, deft, hilarious, and deeply affecting," Fin & Lady is a comic, romantic love story: the story of a brother and sister who must form their own unconventional family in increasingly unconventional times.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

This is the story of four slave mistresses, known as "wenches " who become friends at Tawawa House in Ohio.  Tawawa is a resort that "masters" travel to for a few weeks each summer with their "slave wives," leaving their actual wives home on the plantation with the kids. Of course, some of the kids are the offspring of the wench and the master, rather than the wife and the master. It's a tough book but very interesting and enlightening. I was not aware of this place Tawawa, but it really existed and later became a Wilberforce University, attended mainly by African Americans, some of the first students being the offspring of these wenches and their masters! And  W.E.B DuBois taught there.

The women contemplate freedom, learn each others' stories and deepest fears. Some stories are brutal, but the main character, Lizzie, sleeps in the same bed with her owner, the father of her two children, and thinks herself in love with him. And he with her.

I enjoyed this book even though some of it was brutal. 

The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass

Three great books in a row! I am on a roll.
I  have read another book by Julia Glass before and enjoyed it, so downloaded this from the Library onto my iPad (the way I have been reading lately, now that I know  how to work "the system.")
The novel opens as Percy Darling, the widower, returns from his daily run. While he is 70 years old, he keeps up a fitness regime of running and swimming. He lives in a big old house, where he lived with his wife who he lost 30 years ago in an accidental drowning (more about that later.)
He has two daughters who  he has raised by himself; one is a successful oncologist and the other a not-so-successful mother of two divorcee, who is just starting to work for a prestigious nursery school in the barn on Percy's property that used to be his wife's dance studio.
The plot has many disparate elements and characters that all end up related and interwoven. Percy is very close to Robert, his grandson, who is a student at Harvard (Percy used to be a Librarian at the Widener Library on that campus), and who falls in with an ecoterrorist group through his roommate, Turo.  Percy also falls for a local artist, Sarah, and helps in her discovery that she has breast cancer.
A lot of "bad" things happen in this bucolic suburban community on the outskirts of Boston and the novel deals well with the social issues, the gulf between the classes and our excessive modern society. It's really a very satisfying and thought-provoking novel.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Two spectacular reads in a row! What can I read next that will even come close to this book and the one I finished last week, "The Goldfinch!"  They are very different books, but both captivated me!

This novel follows the fortunes an extraordinary woman, Alma Whittaker, daughter to the enterprising Henry Whittaker, who is a poor-born Englishman who eventually becomes the richest man in Philadelphia. The family's involvement in botany and what we know today as herbal medicine, brings them their wealth. The story deals with botany, spiritualism, illustration, and sexual desire. Alma is an amazing character - one the reader will not forget!

From the Westchester Library System review:

Alma has the benefit of wealth and books, spending hours learning Latin and Greek and studying the natural world. But her plain appearance and erudition seem to foretell a lonely life until she meets gifted artist Ambrose Pike. Their intense intellectual connection results in marriage, but Ambrose's deep but unorthodox spiritual beliefs prevent them from truly connecting. Alma, who has never traveled out of Philadelphia, embarks on an odyssey that takes her from Tahiti to Holland, during which she learns much about the ways of the world and her own complicated nature. Gilbert, in supreme command of her material, effortlessly invokes the questing spirit of the nineteenth century, when amateur explorers, naturalists, and enthusiasts were making major contributions to progress. Beautifully written and imbued with a reverence for science and for learning, this is a must-read.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

This book was just named one the ten best books of 2013 by the New York Times! I just finished it a few days ago, and I must say, I did love it!
Here is what they say about it:

Tartt’s intoxicating third novel, after “The Secret History” and “The Little Friend,” follows the travails of Theo Decker, who emerges from a terrorist bombing motherless but in possession of a prized Dutch painting. Like the best of Dickens, the novel is packed with incident and populated with vivid characters. At its heart is the unwavering belief that come what may, art can save us by lifting us above ourselves.

Since this book revolves around art, and a 17th century Dutch painting at that (one of my favorite genres), I was bound to love this book. The story pulls you in from the first pages with a compelling event and then gets deep into the characters, especially that of Theo. In many ways, you will be reminded of Holden Caulfield.

Also of great interest to me was the "Russian Connection."  Theo befriends Boris, quite a character himself.

I really did love this book. I want to go back and read The Secret History and the other Tartt novel I never did read.

We have to wait another decade for another book by her??? 

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Loved this book. It starts out in a small town in Italy in 1962 and a young innkeeper, Pasquale Tursi sees an approaching boat, carrying a beautiful woman, Dee. She is an American movie star, in Italy and part of the cast of the movie, Cleopatra. He falls instantly in love and that carries the book back and forth in time, ending in the present day in Idaho.
There are lots of intersecting stories here, all involving the same cast of characters over time. Walter combines his fictional characters with "real" people, including Richard Burton, who is the father of one of the fictional characters.  The story keeps the interest of the reader throughout, going back and forth in time, relating the different characters to each other. He also includes some other fictional works within his own novel: the first chapter of an unfinished novel by an American who comes to Tursi's hotel once a  year to write, but never seems to make any progress beyond that first chapter. And there's the beginning of a screenplay written by Shane, an aspiring writer who wants to have his story based on the Donner story turned into a screenplay.
The book is funny and satirical, and also touching.  I really enjoyed reading this and will pick up others by Jess Walter, now that I have been exposed to him as a writer.