The Emperor's Children

Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children" is a novel about d world-changing events told through the smallest details. The novel takes place during the summer months of 2001, in the shadow of September 11, but it's real concerns are more personal and center on the lives of its characters. Messud takes time and care sketching her protagonists, and the voice she uses to do so is light and knowing without being crassly comical or becoming too cute for its own good. Still, she's not afraid to keep her focus on the small stuff. She will, for example, spend a paragraph or two describing the particularities of a certain character's facial expression, or a page or two tracing the path of another character's thought process. Messud's got a lovely show more sentence, too: long, winding and graceful, it complements her novel's well-informed, slightly amused, tone. When the attack on the towers finally ocurrs, in the novel's final third, it's not the perfect-for-television spectacle that so many of us not living in New York at the time experienced. Messud lets us see how this event transforms each one of her characters' lives in ways both big and small. It seems that we haven't had too many writers who've been able to take on the events of September, 2001 head-on. Messud's decision to illustrate the aftermath of that terrible event in the miniature of these characters' lives seems wise and skilfully handled.

"The Emperor's Children" isn't, mind you, a mere update of an Austen novel. Her characters often find themselves faced with uniquely contemporary dilemmas, and Messud seems to have an extraordinarily complete understanding of that strange mix of education, wealth, prestige and cultural buzz that equals power in today's intelligensia. As befits any comedy of manners, Messud also offers her own take on the composition of personality and its relationship to the way her characters' interact with each other. While she describes the inner life of all of her characters in admirable detail, she is, in some ways, more interested in the neuroses and delusions they use to keep the truth hidden from both themselves and others. Her characters' true selves are obscured by numerous levels of artifice and pretense, and while doesn't exactly shy away from their duplicity, she's also surprisingly gentle with them. It still takes time and patience to learn the truth about Messud's characters, though, even if she is, in some senses, quite forthright with her reader. Indeed, she seems to argue that some amount of self-deception is necessary in life. In its final pages, when its most idealistic character spins out of the novel's social orbit, "The Emperor's Children" makes the argument that a certain hypocrisy, or a gradual lowering of one's expectations, is essential to the process of growing up, growing wiser, and getting on in the world. Call this a universal truth limned from a set of delicately arranged, highly specific circumstances. I'll call "The Emperor's Children" a skilfull, satisfying novel very much worth reading. show less

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 show more 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. show less

If you’re a reader who has to like the characters to like a book, you might want to skip Claire Messud's The Emperor’s Children. It concerns a bunch of whining, arrogant Manhattanites, in the months before September 11, all convinced of their intellectual superiority and blissfully unaware of their class privilege – no, not unaware; completely aware but unconcerned about it. That said, I did like this book, and I came to care about these characters and their self-imposed crises. An engrossing read.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm an educated, almost-30-year-old woman who moved from a small town in the middle of nowhere to the city that made me love this story about three educated, 30-year-old friends trying to make their way in New York. They're consumed with questions about entitlement and family relationships, truth and journeys. Will this resonate with people who haven't lived in our decade? I don't know. For me, though, it was an extremely powerful examination of the things that obsess us.

When I came across this novel at a library fundraising sale I didn’t know how polarizing it is. People in the publishing world love it (not surprising since both are New York city-centric) and people in the regular world don’t. At least that’s how it looks on the surface. While I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it either. For a book about three young, elite fuck ups and one young, non-elite fuck up, it has its redeeming qualities. If you can get over and around the unwieldy sentence structure. A model of clear writing Messud is not. Ironically she has Marina’s father Murray give her this advice about writing - “Clarity is key.” p 71

I also caught too many words and phrases that Brits and possibly Canadians use, but that show more American’s don’t. “Over the road” instead of across the street, “bobble” instead of pom-pom (the thing on a hat), “Meccano” should be Erector Set or possibly Tinker-toy, we would put our shoes in the closet not the cupboard. Stuff like that is easy to edit out and rankled every time I found one - lazy.

There is a lot of character and scene setting that has to be got through. Between that and the congested writing I almost didn’t, but then the stories started getting interesting and I stuck with it. Lo and behold some of them grow up. It’s a slice of life type of book with an open ending only because life is like that and there wasn’t a specific goal to the action.

My notes on characters and situations as I read - mild spoilers!

Julius = overblown sense of himself and weirdly a pretty strong streak of self-loathing, he is surprised he’s still an unrecognized genius, having no life to make him interesting will try David’s patience, I think. Vigorously destroying the relationship he says he wants so much (and has engineered to occur). The self-loathing turned to self-destruction and the bathroom hook up was too much. D’s reaction was harsh, but J was asking for something dramatic and he got it.

Marina = so used to her looks getting her everything she wants that she has developed nothing else in the way of talent/expertise and now her looks are fading things could get dire. The future with Ludo will be trying and difficult as she is coming to realize post-9/11 and the demise of his great ambition. At least she used his angle to finish her stupid book and good for her for going ahead with publication despite daddy’s withering advice.

Danielle = nervous ninny with a surprising lack of salesmanship or real belief in her projects that is not good for a documentary film producer. Her fling with M was really icky and desperate, but the 9/11 disaster gave her cover for her meltdown when he went to Annabel on the day of the attacks. What else did she think he’d do?

Bootie = muddled thinker mistaking disdain for rugged individualism, has a really odd idea of self-reliance (sponging off Uncle Murray and Aunt Annabel), horrendously selfish and cruel in the end. So childish and inexperienced in his judgement of Murray, who of course isn’t a perfect being; surprise! - he’s human. What an idiot. Doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and is too blind and full of hubris to know he doesn’t.

Murray = the Emperor, a man of consequence who either inspires admiration or condemnation depending on your situation. He’s an institution to some extent and not still full of new ideas or thinking, but that pretty much is part of being human. We tend to wind down and get comfortable in our ruts as we age. Almost everyone who knows him changes opinions on him as the book progresses; mostly for the worse. As a character I found him remote and difficult to relate to. show less

Viewed from a distance The Emperor's Children could be mistaken for another hackneyed tale of self-absorbed twentysomethings coming of age in the big city. It is in fact a sharp, artful group portrait in which each protagonist, every action and motivation is convincing. Messud's drawing of character is vivid and utterly real; her shifting scenes and perspectives may be cinematic, but her sentences are Proustian and poetic. Subtle, clear-eyed and critical, The Emperor's Children is a brilliant snapshot of a society hovering on the brink of history.

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. show more 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.

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