Marina, Danielle, and Julius were classmates at Brown University and are all now approaching 30, and making their way in New York City. Marina is the daughter of Murray Thwaite, a famous journalist. She has been working on her first book for many years, and has never held a "real job." She lives with her parents, having recently moved back home after ending a long-term relationship. Julius is a gay freelance writer who lives lives in a squalid apartment and finds work through a temp agency while waiting for his next writing assignments. Danielle produces television programs, and is the only one with a steady income. The Emperor's Children follows these three over the course of a year. While they rarely cross paths in their day-to-day lives, the bonds of friendship are strong and they do call on each other for help and support. Another key figure in this story is Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, Murray's nephew, who has dropped out of university, and came to New York hoping to find himself and make a living. Murray provides Bootie a place to live, and takes him on as his secretary. Danielle is instrumental in finding Marina a job with a magazine startup, and Marina offers both Julius and Bootie the chance to write an article for the inaugural issue. Julius meets romantic interest David through one of his temp jobs, and begins to move in very different social circles. All of the young people look up to Murray as a role model of the successful and wealthy writer. Meanwhile, Murray is dealing with a bit of a mid-life crisis, and struggles to control everyone around him.

Messud draws an intriguing portrait of a certain social class. The characters in this novel are are shallow, superficial, and materialistic. It was difficult to care much about any of them, but I still found myself oddly drawn to their stories -- like watching an impending train wreck. But this book takes place in 2001 (and remember, in New York City). So of course September 11 was like the elephant in the room the entire time I was reading this book. On several instances, characters discussed events planned for September, which I just knew wouldn't turn out as planned. I was curious how Messud would address this pivotal event in the novel. After finishing the book I was left wondering if setting the novel in 2001 was just an afterthought, a convenient way to tie up the plot. The year is casually thrown into the text about 50 pages in. September 11 occurs 60 pages from the end of the book, and while it understandably changes the characters' lives, it was an all-too-easy way to catalyze certain events and bring the novel to a close. While this was a light read and somewhat pleasurable, it wasn't quite my thing. ( )

2009

Nearly finished this one. It is a great portrait of a group of friends who are making it or not making it in New York. I am enjoying Messud's style of writing and the descriptions of each character and their thoughts is very captivating. It is not an action story as it does move slowly. Definitely worth the effort though. ( )

Story of lives of young people in NYC, twist at the end with 9/11 ( )

This was one of those books that just couldn't hold my interest. I simply don't enjoy the style of writing and the plot was, to me, uninteresting. ( )

que perdida de tiempo. tenia ganas de una novela con muchos personajes donde la trama fuera mas importante que estos experimentos estilisticos o grandes enunciados. me interesaba tambien algo en manhattan y los circulosos intelectualosos/ adinerados. al fin y al cabo la trama es flojona. peor, no hay razon para tener simpatia por estos personajes. de hecho al final son bastante repugnantes. no me parece que la autora tiene mucha distancia de este mundo para ver lo ridiculos que son sus personajes. ( )

This novel's flat narrative voice and disdain with which it treats its characters hurt my overall rating of the book. The theme, class privilege, is brought into a contemporary setting, the seminal year 2001, but lacked any semblance of heart. ( )

This was a good read, yet one ends this book feeling that so much more could have been done with the characters and storyline. The long sentences sometimes work, yet often they are just inconsistent. There are flashes of psychological insight, but the male characters are one-dimensional and poorly developed. The vocabulary sometimes feels forced, as when teenagers start using difficult words they just discovered (the sudden use of the word 'egregious' on successive pages is, well, egregious. The book had me totally absorbed up until the second half, when the flaws become more and more apparent. A good editor could have done so much more here. ( )

A dull, eventless book about annoying unsuccessful 30 year olds who sit around complaining about their shallow lives. I can see this appealing to fans of the "literary fiction" genre, but I just found it irritating. ( )

Set in New York in 2001, this novel chronicles the yearnings and failings of three friends, Danielle (perhaps our main protaganist), her best friend Marina, and their gay friend, Julius. Along the way, Claire Messud instructs us very skillfully about love and loss, about idealism and disillusion, honesty and hypocrisy.

An innocent would-be disciple moves to New York and secures a position with his hero. He finds himself disillusioned in due course (where a more worldly apprentice might not), and writes a hatchet-piece in all starry-eyed honesty. Predictably, the hero banishes the youth from his employ, who moves to a Brooklyn hovel and is perhaps lost when the twin towers are hit on September 11. Whither truth? Whither idealism?

Ms. Messud is particularly strong when reflecting the thought processes of her characters. Emotional forces running through friends and family ring true; I was never confused over motivation, nor by emotional cause and effect. The prose is graceful and fluid, touched perfectly by idiom. This is a writer who knows her milieu and puts you square in the middle of it. She's very effective.

Character, plot, style, and theme meld ineffably here. Most definitely worth your while. ( )

When I heard Maureen Corrigan review Claire Messud's work on NPR, I wanted to be sure to read and finish this book by the anniversary of 9/11. I did so just an hour ago, and still have my breath taken away by her astonishingly masterful rendition of characters, with complex interior lives, leading up to and shortly following that day. Marina, Danielle, and Julius are the thirty-year-old friends around whom we are led to believe the book focuses. However, this is young Frederick "Bootie" Tubb's story through and through, as we gradually learn the roles those three friends, as well as all others in the book, have in shaping his inexorable development as Messud's protagonist. At times the writing - filled with more interior rather than overt dialogue - can be challenging. But if one rereads such passages, it's clear they could not have been written otherwise. There will surely be comparisons to Bonfire of the Vanities, The Corrections, and perhaps Between Two Rivers (deserving of a much wider audience than it's had) - but as a literary memorial to New York and its culture before 9/11, and as a work of breathtaking truth about human relationships, The Emperor's Children is in a class of its own. ( )

I really liked this one. Even though it wasn't funny or weird. ( )

At first, sentence structure unusual. Great vocabulary book Story about 30 something and their relationship. How life is a contradiction. Father famous and is he worthy of worship. Slow moving at first, but well done. Brings up a lot of discussion issues ( )

The Emperor's Children tells the stories of a group of 30-something friends living in Manhattan in 2001. For most of the book I found it difficult to like any of the characters.

There is spoiled Marina, daughter of a respected writer who relies on her looks and her father's reputation to coast through life. Philandering Julius and the fairly dull Danielle are Marina's college friends, though they don't have her advantage of the parental Upper West Side apartment to retreat to when life isn't working out.

I think I almost got the point at the stage in the book when the title is explained. The Emperor's Children have no clothes. The characters aren't meant to be likeable. Those who do finally find some sort of peace or redemption towards the end of the book are those who have maintained a relationship with their parents.

Personally, I found this book pretentious and over-ambitious, and it was hard to tell where the author stopped and the hideously unsympathetic characters began. ( )

Extremely Difficult to Follow Audio Version : Wanted to add a short comment that the long sentences make the audio version perhaps even more difficult to follow than reported in other reviews regarding the print version. If you want to invest the time stick with the print version.

Three friends turning thirty and messing their lives up with bad choices. ( )

Perhaps I should feel ashamed to say I enjoyed this book so full with vacuous characters . The Emperor's Children follows the life of three graduates of Brown through about 6 months of 2001 - notably before and after 9/11. One of the friends was the daughter of a journalist, well known in "intellectual" circles, and even after the age of thirty, she is still worshiping the man, and living under his roof. Their lives are interrupted by the intrusion of an 18 year old cousin who recently dropped out of his upstate school and moves to NYC to "learn though living", and an Australian journalist who plans to start a revolution (and his own fame) through a magazine.

I found the book very well written, yet a fast and engaging to read. Yes, the characters were privileged and ignorant, but from my experience, they were equally representative of people in their situation - i.e., well off, overly coddled, smart, graduates from Ivy League schools. I enjoyed the sections of the book that dealt with the "famous" journalist coming of age and realizing his own limitations - finding it reminiscent of the life of aging academic scientists. The simultaneous naivety and clarity of the 18 years old boy was very well drawn up.

Not a brilliant book for the ages, a worthy reading. ( )

There’s not too much praise that I can heap on this book that hasn’t previously been heaped by every reviewer on the planet. It’s a wonderful book: character-driven, highly literary, and deeply emotional. It’s set in New York City in 2001 and is the story of a group of young people coming of age in the shadow of one of the women’s father who is a well-respected author. The title comes from the phrase “the emperor has no clothes” and refers to the demystification of this philosopher of the previous generation. ( )

the story was alright, but the sentences too long, and i needed a dictionary every 5 pages. ( )

Difficult to get into at first, with unloveable characters, Messud's beautiful style pulls you in. ( )

if you like The Corrections or Widow for One Year ( )

In many ways, a pleasure to read -- populated by wry, more-or-less witty characters and composed in elegantly wrought sentences (although Ms. Messud could use a brush up on the subjunctive mood). Too bad the silly, melodramatic ending casts such a pall over an otherwise charming book. When it comes to fiction, personal catastrophes are infinitely more fascinating than global ones.

Similar in structure and theme to Alan Hollinghurt's Line of Beauty, but not quite as perfect. ( )

This novel opens in the spring of 2001 and examines the undirected lives of several wealthy New Yorkers. The characters are not very likeable, but the plot is interesting, and I enjoyed the richly drawn characterization. Eventually, the book bogs down and may be a bit too long. ( )

Mainstream novel that got tons of airplay on NPR. Very well written, as advertised, and an interesting story. Some of the sentences—written like this with deeply nested clauses, of which there were too godawful many – seemed rather overdone, but they sure did make me concentrate. A mannered style, I think. What do I know? I was an art major. Based on the story and its non-genreness, you’d think I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, but it was surprisingly good. ( )

pretty good. ( )