Notes from above ground: Problems in the early pages of The Woman Upstairs

Well I definitely think Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children was one of the best contemporary American novels of the past decade, and like so many others I've been anticipating her next novel but have, based on some tepid reviews, been a little hesitant about taking up The Woman Upstairs but did start it last night - and am finding it, through 40 pages or so, problematic at best. It's in the first person, which, it seems to me, is not the right decision of Messud - it takes away from the elegance of her style and her nuanced observations, locking us into one person's point of view - and in this case a very unpleasant person at that. A first-person narrator, even a devilish one, needs a strong and engaging personality, and this narrator, at least so far, is mainly a kvetch: she's an elementary-school teacher in Cambridge, single, early 40s, kind of limited social life it seems, possibly attracted to women but that's not clear yet, sees her self as an artist or more accurately as an artist manque, and much of her narration keeps coming back to her failure to create a career as an artist, which had been her lifelong dream. OK, thousands, millions probably, wish they could be an artist (or a writer), and as I've noted in other posts there's a huge difference between wanting to be a writer/artist and wanting to draw/to write - if you just want to "be an artist" you most likely have a. the wrong idea of what an artist's life is really like (it's not La Boheme) and b. the wrong drive and desire. Paint, draw, sculpt, write - if you truly are an artist you will do this and not talk about it. Worse, I am truly annoyed at those like this narrator who blame their failure on their gender - as if her work has been ignored because she's a woman, or as if she couldn't find a career because she had to devote time to caring for her mother, etc. Look, it's always difficult - many guys (several I know) would have liked to be artists/writers but in effect have had to work for a living at a salaried job - but still find time to do their creative work if the drive is serious and if the talent is there. Gender obviously can play a role - but it can also be an excuse. Second problem, so far, is that over 40 pp. there's a lot of talk, a lot of back story, but no really engaging plot to this point - a student has been bullied and narrator reaches out to his mom and they begin to form a bond - a long journey so far for very little action - Messud is not one to put a bone in the throat right away. Compare with other elegant first-person novels - perhaps The Secret History? - and see the difference. I do like her title, however - as she wisely notes in an early chapter, the woman upstairs is the counterpart to Dostoyevsky's "underground  man," in her case conventional, visible, but equally in despair. Can she make good use of this over the course of the rest of the novel?