A Doll's House demolished - and a totally unlikable narrator in The Woman Upstairs

OK so I was wrong about the ending of Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs and ought to stop trying to write other people's novels but I still think my anticipated ending might have been better than the sad and venomous ending that Messud actually wrote. so instead of learning, as I'd suspected that the narrator - Nora (and not till last night did I make a connection with A Doll's House) - is has fantasized her entire relationship with the exotic threesome family - we realize that, yes, the relationship is real, but means something very different to Nora than it does to Sirena and her husband whose name I don't even remember. We learn that they have essentially been using Nora the whole time - the husband flirting and flattering and eventually having some kind of sex with her (she stresses for some reason that that did not "go to bed" with each other); Sirena praising her artwork and seeking her advice, when it's obvious that Nora is an amateur artist and Sirena is courting greatness (though Messud's description of her installations make her sound absurd, at least to me - but the art world often is absurd and driven by personality and connections) - all to get Nora as a cheap babysitter for Reza, their kid and her student (a real boundary violation that she hardly recognizes). After the threesome left Cambridge they make only the most cursory efforts to stay in touch, and we learn at the very end why: S., without permission, uses a surreptitious video of Nora masturbating as part of her famous installation art; Nora discovers this by chance and is furious, obviously, and vows revenge - the revenge, we understand, is this novel we are reading - though who comes off worst in the novel? I would say Nora herself - completely self-deluded, completely narcissistic and bitter and unpleasant, seemingly uninterested in her work or in any family or friendship, other than latching on to this somewhat glamorous family because they flatter her all the time - and bitter than she is not, like S., a famous artist - when she no doubt does not and never did have the drive or talent. So what? Continue with your f-ing art and get some joy out of that - the world doesn't owe you a living, or recognition. There will be much to talk about when book group takes this one one - though I in no way think this novel is a portrait of an artist. I also think Messud did not rise up to the level of her previous work here - I know this is a narrator-driven novel, but that's pretty tough with such an unlikable and circumscribed narrator. Novelists have to show, not tell - and she misses numerous opportunities for significant scenes and actions: most of all, wouldn't we want to see Nora come back to Sirena and tell her to go to hell? Shouldn't something more significant and dramatic have happened when the schoolchildren visit the installation in the studio - with all the possibilities for injury, for moral outrage (the pornographic photos of an 11-year-old are just lying around here - waiting for a parent to see them! the hanging shards of glass! - and you're bringing in 8-year-old kids to play??), and so forth. As noted - I've got to stop writing the novels of others.