The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

Book Overview

A bestselling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way--and not--in New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030726419X
• ISBN13: 9780307264190
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 431 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Balancing The Scales

Every so often, I check into the review page for The Emperor's Children, just to see if anything has changed. I remember stopping by the first time, and being shocked by the poor reviews, and assuming it had to be a temporary twist of the numbers, that the universe will certainly right itself soon enough. Well, it hasn't. I won't argue with anyone's experiences of the book -- that's far beyond what I can offer. I will say that, as a journalist in DC, it's far and away the most accurate examination of the Eastern intellectual class that I've encountered. Messud is a gorgeous writer whose scenes are deeply observed and hauntingly constructed. The world of the book is specific, to be sure, and it's possible, as you see in the reviews, that many won't relate. But if you went to a small liberal arts college; if you're fascinated, or resentful, or appalled, or attracted, by the pretensions of the self-styled intellectual set; if you like sharply written banter; you can hardly do better than this book.

A Big Surprise!

I bought this book on impulse. Hadn't read any reviews, knew nothing about it. In fact, I'm embarassed to admit that I thought it was about China. What a shock to discover within a few words that it's sort of a modern gothic story that mostly takes place in New York City. Normally, I dislike books with a sinister and dark tone. But the creativity and originality of this book kept me interested and deeply impressed to the end. Yes, the spoiled and selfish characters are unlikable. Isn't that part of the point of the book? If they were endearing it would have been a different book--"chick-lit" maybe? And yes, there were some very long--paragraph long sentences. But usually, they were characters' stream of thoughts. How many people think it short sentences--or sentences at all? And yes, there were some words I have never seen, but the concept of learning while I read isn't such a bad one--is it? I think this book is one of the most interesting and creative books I've read in a long time and I think it (and the author) deserve five stars.

The Eternal Human Comedy

I just finished The Emperor's Children, a delightful book of the type you dread finishing, because it's become such an amusing and distracting companion in your life. You want to start all over with it. However, Claire Messud could definitely clean up her grammar and usage--not so much because that's so intrinsically important, but because her excesses with punctuation and her occasionally confusing sentence structure break the spell of an otherwise compelling narrative. (Does she need a new editor?) As Samuel Beckett said (Messud refers to "Beckettian" writing four or five times in one chapter), "the semi-colon is odious"--and Messud sprinkles them like raisins throughout one section of the novel. Nonetheless, she draws such a subtle, wry, intelligent portrait of her self-absorbed and misguided crew of characters that the tendency is to shake ones head in recognition--not only of ones friends, family and acquaintances, but of oneself, sadly enough. She shows, with continuous respect for the intelligence of the reader, how most people are much better and much worse than we ever imagine them to be. She never draws her humor too broadly, just slips it in so you recognize, chuckle and marvel at the truth of it, then go on to yet more gems. For instance, one character needs to pluck a hair she notices from her chin, even though she hasn't bathed in days, will see no one and is saving up pills, just in case. This is so subtly put, one hardly notices it--as with the moment another review described when the father makes sure he closes the private information on his computer screen before going to the aid of his daughter, who is possibly in truly dire straits. We don't say to ourselves, What a creep! Actually, we think, Hmmm, I wonder if I would do that? And if so, what does that say about me? That is the question of the book, What does all this say about us? And has it been forever so? Not only the Emperor is naked, if truth were to be told, but also his children and their children to come. Messud is, for me, a mix of Tom Wolfe, Jane Austen and a touch of Woody Allen, at times--all of whom exposed human foibles with love and license and provided some kind of comfort and relief to their audience. We don't have to take it so seriously. The complaint about the book not being serious enough about 9/11 is misdirected (although such a complaint could be put to good service as a humorously pious attitude in the novel). The disaster is used, minimally, as a device, just as cancer is so often used in a novel, to turn the plot. Also, the fact that this is about the Literati & Glitterati, to some extent anyway, is not important--it could be about any social circle.

Fear of the Ordinary

This book is a poignant exploration of the unexpectedly deep chasm between exceptional promise and actual achievement. Marina and her two best friends skyrocket out of Brown University with the assumption that they are destined for greatness, but after some early successes, they are faced with the reality that the potential to make a serious contribution to the world is not the same as actually making it; and that what is impressive at age 20 is no longer impressive a decade later. They become stuck in an endless round of "if only's" -- if only Marina's intellect wasn't overshadowed by her beauty and by the reputation of her father; if only Danielle's boss would greenlight her serious ideas for documentaries instead of her frivolous ones; if only Julius was financially secure enough to pursue his dreams on his own terms instead of having to kowtow to his financially stable but possessive lover. The anxiety and uncertainty of Marina and her friends is matched by the anxiety and uncertainty of Marina's father, Murray Thwaite, a brilliant and arrogant journalist whose celebrated career is on a downward decline and who secretly believes he is a washed-up has been. He channels his anxiety into affairs with ever-younger women who are awed by his fame and position and flattered by his attentions. He reassures himself of his essential goodness by taking on as his protege his overweight and underprivileged nephew Bootie, whose own incredible arrogance leads him to make spectacular errors of judgment and to burn every bridge he crosses. Messud's genius is that she creates fully fleshed out human beings where most authors would create "types." It is easy to picture these characters in a Tom Wolfe novel, for example. But where Wolfe would paint the characters with a broad brush that would eliminate any subtlety, Messud uses an extremely fine brush to articulate every nuance, making it impossible to pigeon-hole any character. Even the ostensible 'villian' -- the reptilian Australian journalist who has the gall to fall in love with the beautiful, rich Marina instead of the slightly frumpy Danielle -- is both insightful and shallow, and is able to motivate Marina in a way that no one else can. As book marches through the first eight months of 2001, the climax of the book is no suprise. But instead of using the tragedy of 9/11 as an obviously transformative event in the lives of her characters, Messud explores the aftermath of 9/11 with the same nuance and subtlety that she brings to the rest of the book.

One of the best things I've read this year.........

Richly drawn and compelling -- I highly recommend this. While this has to do with me being frighteningly smack-dab-in-the-middle of her characters' demographic, it's also that she turns a really witty, caustic eye on the whole literati scene. Biting without being preachy, clever. Good stuff.