The Emperor's Children (Hardcover) by Claire Messud - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

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09/20/07

Lee rated it:

bookshelves: have-read

Read in September, 2007

Is Claire Messud Wearing Any Clothes?

This is a question I have been sleeping fitfully on. I finished The Emperor's Children last night and I really wanted to be able to post a wholly enthusiastic assessment of it here, but I can't. First, let's get rid of business. This is a book that has to appear in the epilogue of my dissertation, which discusses literary reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks. My primary focus here is going to be on how in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Jonathan...more Is Claire Messud Wearing Any Clothes?

This is a question I have been sleeping fitfully on. I finished The Emperor's Children last night and I really wanted to be able to post a wholly enthusiastic assessment of it here, but I can't. First, let's get rid of business. This is a book that has to appear in the epilogue of my dissertation, which discusses literary reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks. My primary focus here is going to be on how in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer uses the figure and style of the child as a way of modeling what he takes to be an ethical or appropriate literary response to an event which, it seems clear, reminds him of the Holocaust, Dresden, Hiroshima, etc. Messud approaches Sept. 11 more directly, making it a crucial hinge around which her handful of her plots resolve themselves. Sept. 11 changes her characters. In short, it does the work that she ought to be doing for herself as a novelist.

But before dealing with its problems, I should admit I really enjoyed the first three parts of the novel, the first three hundred pages. Messud is good at writing one kind of sentence--a sort of Henry James Lite sentence--but it's a beautiful sentence and can achieve impressive effects at the level of the paragraph and the chapter. Some of the novel's early chapters are really terrific, scathingly ironic in the best way. Their satirical edge was what compelled me to buy the book in the first place. Unfortunately Messud becomes a victim of her own success; she flails when she tries to deviate from her standard style. Efforts at writing fake newspaper columns or at miming styles other than her preferred style creak awkwardly. This is a symptom of the fact that Messud has problems writing characters with depth and dimension. Everyone speaks like everyone else, thinks like everyone else, experiencing the world through the prisim of her Henry James Lite style, which at first seems as if it's an ironic commentary on how the minds of these characters work but turns instead into an inadvertently commentary on Messud herself.

What differentiates her two female protagonists, Danielle and Marina, are relative levels of beauty. Her two main gay characters, Julius and David, though supposedly very different sorts of gay men, end up seeming like catty clones of each other, stereotypes incarnate. Murray Thwaite, the intellectual luminary at the center of the narrative--the "emperor" of the title--is also paper thin. His intellectual pedigree and his esteem in the liberal community is often referred to but not persuasively demonstrated; he manages not to say even one smart thing in 470 pages, which may be part of her point, but Messud does not do enough to build him up before she tears him down.

Only Booty, Murray's nephew, rises above the words on the page that describe him. Only he makes a meaningful choice when confronted with the the terrorist attacks, and a hilarious one at that. The rest of the characters here are constitutionally unable to make meaningful choices because their personhood has not been sufficiently developed in what preceded the moment of the attack. Danielle becomes depressed. Murray remains more or less the same. Marina and Julius are only superficially scarred. I came to this novel prepared to like it--hell, even to love it--and for about 300 pages I did, on its own terms, in its own style. Once September rolled around, the whole thing fell apart for me. Which does not of course mean I won't write about the book in my dissertation. I will.(less)

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08/14/07

Mark Desrosiers rated it:

bookshelves: overrated-drivel

Read in January, 2007

I only read about eight pages, a stately procession of blindingly obvious sentences with laser-pointers and strobelights and migraines between every fooking vowel and consonant, but I don't need to read any more. This is exactly the sort of prose that should be excised from these mass NYC-wuss fiction rollouts. For example (skipping forward to page 27):

The insouciance, of course, masked endless and wearisome neuroses, to which Marina and Danielle were privy.

"Of cours...more

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07/02/07

Ewurama rated it:

(review of isbn 030727666X)

Read in July, 2007

I didn’t start to get into this one until about 200 pages in, when out of nowhere came intrigue! scandal! Until that point the characters came across as either too irritating or too false to grab me. (Seriously, Ludovic Seeley? Bootie Tubb? Sounds like a cartoon villain and his sidekick.)

I did find myself drawn in, though, around page 200 as I said, and there were many instances at which I did really admire the author’s writing—whether for a particular turn of phrase or a keen...more I didn’t start to get into this one until about 200 pages in, when out of nowhere came intrigue! scandal! Until that point the characters came across as either too irritating or too false to grab me. (Seriously, Ludovic Seeley? Bootie Tubb? Sounds like a cartoon villain and his sidekick.)

I did find myself drawn in, though, around page 200 as I said, and there were many instances at which I did really admire the author’s writing—whether for a particular turn of phrase or a keenly drawn insight. And then there were things like this:

“She, who had felt she saw so clearly that it hurt, had felt that the truth, crystalline, was, with Murray, granted her (though not through his help, or anything he did: but just by his presence; as though, indeed, he were but a part of her that had been lost, a magnificent Platonic epiphany repeated, and daily repeated: this, surely, was love!), felt, now, that the weight of emotion lay like a veil, a fine mist.”

I’m sorry, what? Come again? It’s like watching a Gilmore Girls marathon—too many words! Somebody give the copyeditor a raise for keeping track of all those commas (17, I counted). I think I might actually understand the sentence now, but that’s after having read it 30 times. I don’t think authors should water down their prose for easy reading, but I sometimes found it difficult to see what purpose Messud’s stylistic choices served.

Although some of the characters felt incredibly false to me initially, they became more believable (though no more loveable) as the book unfolded. I don’t mind not liking the characters in a book, but I do want to like reading about them; and that often wasn’t the case with this novel. An interesting part of the reading experience for me, though, was how I could at once be critical of the characters and sheepishly cognizant of my own unfortunate resemblance to them.

I laughed at Bootie’s (Seriously, Bootie Tubb?) pseudo-intellectual posturing and (adolescent) search for meaning! truth! but I quote Emerson to myself in earnest. I rolled my eyes at Marina and her whole “I want to do something important” routine. “So do it already and shut up!” I tell her (and myself). In his novel Everyman (which I haven’t read), Phillip Roth has one of his characters quote painter and photographer Chuck Close: “Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.” Marina and her crew were an uncomfortable reminder of the luxury of being able to look for inspiration! and meaning! and how easily we (I) can take that indulgence for granted.

Wow. Okay, this review has turned out to be much longer than I’d planned to make it, so I’ll quit now before I commit all the sins I’ve just complained about!! ;) Too, late? ,? ,?

In summary: some things I really liked, others not so much…on balance, the book was just okay.
(less)

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07/16/07

Rebekah rated it:

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: New Yorkers, people who see entitlement as a problem

My personal bible- the Sunday New York Times Book Review- claimed that this novel was the best of the year, the first to tackle the issues of the current 30-something generation, the first to directly deal with September 11 in fiction form and basically brilliant. I went into this book with high expectations and was not disappointed.

The characters in this novel are all superbly drawn and voiced, each seems like a separate, distinct being with individual loves, fears, insecurities, d...more My personal bible- the Sunday New York Times Book Review- claimed that this novel was the best of the year, the first to tackle the issues of the current 30-something generation, the first to directly deal with September 11 in fiction form and basically brilliant. I went into this book with high expectations and was not disappointed.

The characters in this novel are all superbly drawn and voiced, each seems like a separate, distinct being with individual loves, fears, insecurities, desires and above all, disappointments. Early on in the book, it becomes apparent that in New York City, if you haven't made it big, or at least made a splash in the learned, academic/journalistic world, by the age of 30, you likely never will and thus, your life is over. The three friends that the story centers around graduated from Brown and moved to the city, only to flounder their way for the next eight years. Julius, a fabulously gay man from Michigan, once made a splash by writing book reviews, but is now the "house wife" of a rich businessman from Scarsdale. Marina, daughter of a famous reporter and literary writer, has been working on a book about the reflection of culture on children's clothing (a book from which the novel takes its title) for the past eight years, a book that no one, not her friends or her family, ever think will be finished. Danielle, a producer in television, has her story ideas about cultural revolutions or the Australian aborigines shot down so often, she finally relents and pitches a story about botched liposuction, just to get on the air. Members of Marina's family, including her famous father, lawyer mother and younger cousin and a rich magazine publisher round out the cast of characters.

This novel could easily be held up against Jane Austin's as a lesson in the evolution of irony over the centuries. Messud's wit is bitter at times, sharp at others, but if you read virtually any chapter again, there is room for a sarcastic and ironic view of what the characters are thinking. Each character has the capacity to be at once selfish and utterly selfless, or to show generosity and greed in the breath.

Messud's picture of New York City, both before and after September 11, is accurate, both impressive and slightly seedy. As the actual events of September 11 unfold, unexpected and yet brilliantly folded into the plot and resolution of the novel, one experiences this tragedy though the eyes of the characters, each reaction different from the others, yet each unbelievable poignant and utterly effecting. (less)

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07/09/08

Eric rated it:

bookshelves: crap

Read in July, 2008

Wow, what a botched job here. I'm almost sorry for her. This is a handbook for how not to construct a novel. It's a warning to writers: know yourself, and play to your strengths. I was really drawn in at first, hungrily reading. Messud very, very deftly introduces a little universe of interconnected characters, whose relations are thick with possible interest and conflict, a nest of fascinating subplots. I was excited.

1.) There's the grand old man of letters, Murray Thwaite, and th...more Wow, what a botched job here. I'm almost sorry for her. This is a handbook for how not to construct a novel. It's a warning to writers: know yourself, and play to your strengths. I was really drawn in at first, hungrily reading. Messud very, very deftly introduces a little universe of interconnected characters, whose relations are thick with possible interest and conflict, a nest of fascinating subplots. I was excited.

1.) There's the grand old man of letters, Murray Thwaite, and the erotic charge in his relationship with his beautiful, adoring daughter Marina, who begins a relationship with and eventually marries Ludovic, an editor and a rising young Turk among the 'chattering classes,' a man Murray despises and who despises Murray in turn. Messud begins to weave a richly Jamesian tale in which Murray and Ludovic, monsters of egotism, vie for control of the affections of the passive, childlike Marina...but then she drops that storyline entirely. Uh, ok, you were on to something there, Claire.

2.) Then there's Frederick/Bootie, Murray's nephew, a slovenly, awkward, slightly creepy but intelligent and well-read drifting college dropout who shows up in New York and is taken in by Murray, and employed as his secretary. Bootie idolizes Murray. This isn't really believable, because someone of Bootie's reading and standards probably wouldn't mistake Murray--a 'thoughtful columnist,' a mere journalist, barely an intellectual, certainly no sage--for the second coming of Emerson. But whatever. Bootie is soon disillusioned with Murray, and does something really, wonderfully nasty: he happens upon Murray's secret manuscript, a work of philosophy that Murray cherishes as the key to his literary immortality, and writes a damning expose of Murray's pretensions and limitations, with of course generous quotations from the manuscript. He sends the article to Ludovic, who sits on it, but idly considers publishing it in the new magazine he's planning, much to the fury of Murray and the mixed feelings of Marina, who's just then mad at her dad for advising her not publish her first book. This Bootie subplot, though seriously flawed by Messud's inability to make Bootie at all alive, would have nicely dovetailed with the Murray-Ludovic-Marina triangle, but, again, Messud drops the thread completely. It just goes away. Murray fires Bootie and the boy slinks off to Fort Greene.

So yeah, the only storylines Messud choses to develop throughout the novel are 1.) the self-destructive antics of Julius, a promiscuous, sarcastic, coke-snorting gay man straight from Central Casting, and 2.) the affair Marina's best friend, Danielle, starts with Murray, after Marina gets with Ludovic, who Danielle at first thought liked her. This is the least interesting of all the subplots, and the vehicle for a lot of mawkish indirect discourse when we're in Danielle's head. Danielle is flat and boring, the character who is, after Bootie, the least able to carry the book. And soon all hope is lost when 9/11 happens. I groaned when I recalled, 80 pages from the end, that this was a 9/11 novel. Fuck. Clio, Muse of History, appears on stage in all her berobed, personified glory, and all hope for any saving dramatic development is vanquished. How lazy, how jejune. The characters, already stalled, then begin wringing their hands about how the world has changed forever.

I can't really convey how disappointing this book is. (I do feel iffy about giving it just one star and shelving it with 'crap,' because there are some very fine things here...but I'm going to be stern: a novel should be judged as a novel, as a structure, not as a sheaf of incidental beauties.) Messud abandons all of her Jamesian deftness of plotting and Wharton-like lofty irony for some really dull ruminations, clunky coincidences, and automatic and utterly undistinguished prose. And I was completely puzzled by the shift to Bootie at the end. He flees New York--everyone thinks he died when the towers fell, he was temping nearby--and hides out in Miami, and the book ends with his plan to reemerge someday and "take them by surprise." Huh? Huh? Bootie is, as a character, the greatest failure in the book, the most obvious sign of Messud's limitations as a writer (and if you can't construct a believable Brooding Young Male, you might as well get out of the game; even if you can't fully imagine him, the ground is thick with precedents from which to model such a character). Even when he's betraying Murray, he's so vague and lifeless. He's hardly on the page as an incidental figure, let alone a subtly nasty Jamesian villain or brooding Dostoevskian fireband. Why is he the portentous spirit presiding over the finale? Doesn't make sense. Perhaps this is what I get for taking a chance on a bestseller. What dreary shit. (less)

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08/20/07

L rated it:

bookshelves: over-rated

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: Brown graduates in their early 30s living in Manhattan

After finally finishing this book in an agonizing three days, I read the NYT book review on line to try to figure out why the NYT would consider this book is notable. Evidently, Massud is a "writer's writer" and the reviewer herself was a Brown graduate in her '30s.

Not being either a writer or a Brown graduate, and being in the later half of my 30's, nothing in this book grabbed or amused me, save, perhaps, the character of Julius. This is due in part to the forced use ...more

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07/03/07

David rated it:

(review of isbn 0330444476)

bookshelves: hideously-vile-protagonists

Read in January, 2007

I found "The Emperor's Children" incredibly disappointing. The reviews I had read just raved and raved, but I disliked it intensely. Shallow, solipsistic characters about whom I couldn't even bring myself to care - neither could the author apparently, as some were nothing more than lazy ciphers - the guy from Australia, Julius's boyfriend, the wife. Good God, if you are going to stoop to the jaded device of bringing in an alienated outsider to stir things up, please take the time at le...more

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10/10/08

Katherine rated it:

bookshelves: newer-fiction

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Katherine by: Alison Sharpe
recommends it for: striving new york city thirty-pushers, of course.

This book came in for a drubbing from the Goodreads community that was very much at odds with the fulsome praise on its back cover. Where I shall I situate myself on this continuum of blame to praise?

At over 400 pages, The Emperor's Children is long, but I raced through it, inhaling sections like I've been known to do with big bowls of salty, buttery popcorn. This may have something to do with where I'm at, right now -- craving the kind of escape that narrative provides -- but it's a...more This book came in for a drubbing from the Goodreads community that was very much at odds with the fulsome praise on its back cover. Where I shall I situate myself on this continuum of blame to praise?

At over 400 pages, The Emperor's Children is long, but I raced through it, inhaling sections like I've been known to do with big bowls of salty, buttery popcorn. This may have something to do with where I'm at, right now -- craving the kind of escape that narrative provides -- but it's also a testament to the author's knack for pacing. It's a long book made up of very short chapters, and I got addicted to running from porthole to porthole, peering in at the characters and plot-lines in quick succession. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, to finish.

I think The Emperor's Children is trying to be an old-fashioned novel (the dust-cover praise mentions Wharton, Fitzgerald, and Waugh) about new times and new things. I think that's an interesting goal, in these subjectivity-obsessed times of ours. The narrator is omniscient and removed but all-seeing. The characters span a (fairly) wide range of ages and social backgrounds. The author strives for a timeless, stately tone, too. Most of the time she succeeds. Somebody already pointed out her Jamesian long sentences. Usually it's lovely. She likes to avoid split infinitives by putting the adjective before the infinitive rather than after it ("boldly to go," "naturally to finish"), which sounds a little high-flown, but it works with it.

About a third of the way in, I found myself wondering how we are meant to take the characters in this book, as in, how seriously, and how we are to judge them, because there does seem to be an invitation to judgment. (It is, after all, a novel of manners. That's what we're supposed to do with them, right?) Some of the reviewers seem inclined to write the book off because they deem the characters to be shallow, but I think that some degree of shallowness, or hypocrisy, was the point. Actually, I'd like to get into this conversation with someone...is the book supposed to be an indictment of the people in it, or the world it portrays? What's 9/11 doing at the end, anyway, besides being climactic?

In the end, I think I enjoyed the novel more as a fast-moving story and as a very vivid collection of details from disparate worlds than I did as a commentary on social life or a portrait of inner life, if that makes sense. Even though some of the characters failed to inspire my sympathy at times, I continued to be curious about what was going to happen to them next. More than anything else, what struck me was Claire Messud's facility with details. We get the minutest descriptions of the inside of a grubby shared college house, right down to the slimy chain you have to plunge your hand into the tank to retrieve before flushing, and then the precise contents of the fridge at an Upper West Side apartment facing the Park, then the exact books and CDs on the shelves of a 30-year-old working woman's studio. For every detail that seemed a little bit off, and there were a few that I was inclined to cavil at because they don't match MY reality, there were a handful of others that made me think, 'my god! She's not supposed to KNOW this stuff!'

In any case, I'll doubtless think about this book often if only because the building where the character Danielle Minkoff, the book's moral center, was supposed to have lived really exists, and is clearly visible from the corner where I catch the subway to come home from work.

Writers about New York City have a peculiar advantage and disadvantage that way, it seems. There are a lot of eyes in this city, and while everybody likes reading about something they have a personal experience of, everybody's quick to jump on the person who gets it even a little bit wrong. I'm a New Yorker (five-ish years here?) and nearing 30 and while I don't feel that Marina's, Julius's, or even Danielle's world maps perfectly onto mine, it'd be churlish not to admit that there are a few points of contact, or that reading about the familiar/unfamiliar world these characters inhabit isn't good fun.

(less)

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01/14/08

Stacey rated it:

(review of isbn 030727666X)

bookshelves: bookclub-gems, gag-me-with-a-spoon

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: um, no one!

I have less than 100 pages left in this one, but don't foresee the end changing my opinion.

I hated this book. Hated. I must not be smart enough to "get it", since I didn't go to Brown and all. But really, (can you not put entire sentences in parenthesis) within your other run-on, (never ending sentences?? Please??). I mean seriously, get an editor...save us 300 pages. I felt the need to consult a dictionary every other page, but really just didn't care that much to und...more

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12/15/07

Anne rated it:

Read in December, 2007

It's 2001 in Manhattan, and each character is trying (with varying levels of commitment) to do something or be someone that matters. Three friends (Marina, Danielle, and Julius) have just turned thirty and are staring down their disappointments -- unfinished book manuscripts, botched projects, failed love affairs, apartments "where pets go to die". Marina's father, renowned social critic Murray Thwaite, is struggling to write what he hopes will be his masterwork. Then his nephew Boo...more It's 2001 in Manhattan, and each character is trying (with varying levels of commitment) to do something or be someone that matters. Three friends (Marina, Danielle, and Julius) have just turned thirty and are staring down their disappointments -- unfinished book manuscripts, botched projects, failed love affairs, apartments "where pets go to die". Marina's father, renowned social critic Murray Thwaite, is struggling to write what he hopes will be his masterwork. Then his nephew Bootie drops out of college and shows up Murray's door, declaring himself both autodidact and pupil. Meanwhile the aptly named Ludo, a creepy-charming Australian entrepreneur, hopes to take New York (and Murray Thwaite) by storm with his "revolutionary" new magazine. We know the towers will fall in the September portion of the book, and this casts a shadow from the very beginning. When they do fall, the book is consumed -- its characters derailed, its ideas or war on ideas exposed as meaningless. The ending left me disoriented and nervous, unsure where anyone really stood emotionally, why they did what they did, or what they would do next. This was a hard and confusing way to feel when you have been close with them for five-hundred pages. It's a September 12 sort of ending, when processing was deemed unseemly (see: reactions to Susan Sontag's response in that week's New Yorker).

This book is definitely engrossing: its characters richly drawn, its prose lush and impressive. But ultimately it disappointed me, much like New York sometimes does. I've caught more than one real-life whiff of this Manhattan, the faux-sexy banality of publishing, the notion that it creates and controls the Meaning of Life. Sometimes -- I admit -- I do get caught up in the idea that New York, or what it stands for, is the center of something. But I know this is self-indulgent, a coping mechanism -- like I'm wandering around in a lovely black and white postcard with the Empire State Building still under construction or inside the wide windowed waiting room of the former Penn Station. Or I'm by the Flatiron Bldg and snow's falling, and Dorothy Parker's on one arm and Gene Kelley's on the other, Ella Fitzgerald playing in the background, Auden smoking a pipe out that window over there, and John Lennon streaks by naked, bedecked in leis -- and everyone of every race holds hands, smiles and sings "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" as Rudy Giuliani (oddly in color, inserted in South Park Celebrity Style) announces he's moving to Brazil FOREVER. Then I wake from this reverie, realizing that all of those people (except Rudy) are dead. I worry I'll never have enough money or finish my novel, and then I smell the piss and despair of the subway and feel embarrassed for being as lucky and safe as I am. And then I overhear a designer-clad woman complaining that a guy spent "only" $100 on their first date. And then an angry mother sitting next to me slaps her kid around, telling him to SHUT THE FUCK UP when he's just trying to show her a picture he's drawn. So where was I? This book. Reading it feels like waking from my delusion, then being shown too safely into someone else's, and then someone else's, and finding that each is ugly anew, and feeling judged and wanting someone to blame, and thinking hard, hard, hard about why so many vapid books are published, why nepotism is so rampant, why New Yorkers (both natives and seekers) believe we are at the center of the country and the world. I guess I just wish that this book could have succeeded more in what its protagonists were incapable of: seeing beyond itself.(less)

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08/22/07

Matthew rated it:

(review of isbn 030727666X)

It's no secret how The Emperor's Children will end. Claire Messud's novel follows a group of New Yorkers, all connected in some way, during the summer and fall of 2001, culminating with the terrorist attacks of September 11. The tragedy is unavoidable and, for the reader, completely foreseen. But this isn't a book about September 11. Messud doesn't rely on or construct her story around the impending disaster like, say, something like Titanic does. What's important here is not that the tragedy oc...more It's no secret how The Emperor's Children will end. Claire Messud's novel follows a group of New Yorkers, all connected in some way, during the summer and fall of 2001, culminating with the terrorist attacks of September 11. The tragedy is unavoidable and, for the reader, completely foreseen. But this isn't a book about September 11. Messud doesn't rely on or construct her story around the impending disaster like, say, something like Titanic does. What's important here is not that the tragedy occurs, but how it changes the characters, how it suddenly reveals who they really are, and how it echoes some of the novel's main themes, particularly this: You are not as important or invulnerable as you think you are.

Three ambitious, idealistic friends from college (Marina, Danielle, and Julius) are now thirty years old, struggling with the creeping doubt that their lives are destined to be ordinary after all. Marina's pretending to write a book for which she's already spent her entire advance. Danielle's a television producer, frustrated at having to curb her abstract ideas for higher ratings. Julius, after a successful stint as a cultural critic, now merely plays at being in the "it crowd." To make matters worse, they all live under the long shadow of Murray Thwaite, Marina's father, a wildly popular journalist and social activist, who is similarly, and secretly, lost.

As much a novel about growing up as it is about the illusions of power, The Emperor's Children alternates between each character, giving the reader glances of their insecurities and fears. When Messud introduces two other people to this world, things go slowly awry. With long, fluid sentences, she describes these polite betrayals and social hypocrisy beautifully, but Messud's characters are not nearly as captivating and charismatic as she wants them to be, and we're stuck inside their rambling thoughts, which are often repetitive. It's not that The Emperor's Children has no clothes, it's just that its clothes aren't as shiny as you may have heard.

"Wasn't irrelevance, smallness, the dutiful petty life what everyone ultimately wanted to shed? And wasn't shedding as important as embracing, in the formation of an adult self?"(less)

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07/10/07

Jennifer rated it:

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: no one

There are several things that I did not like about this book. For starters, the writing style and language used was rather arrogant, pompous, and supercilious. Do you get my point? She used multiple adjectives that mean the same thing and also used words that sound like they were straight out of Dawson's Creek. NO ONE talks like that! I think she may have spent more time looking up fancier ways to phrase things rather than on the plot.

I didn't like this book from the beginning...more

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06/15/08

Galen rated it:

(review of isbn 030727666X)

Read in January, 2008

This book follows three Brown graduates at that crossroads of turning 30, trying to reach their potential and somewhat confused about why they haven't. SO disappointing that there wasn't much insight associated with this book...I was really looking forward to reading it, being a Brown graduate who just dealt with reaching my 30s and having read fantastic reviews of the book. Aside: Why did Messud have to pick on Brown??? There are shallow failures from every school. Okay, enough personal co...more This book follows three Brown graduates at that crossroads of turning 30, trying to reach their potential and somewhat confused about why they haven't. SO disappointing that there wasn't much insight associated with this book...I was really looking forward to reading it, being a Brown graduate who just dealt with reaching my 30s and having read fantastic reviews of the book. Aside: Why did Messud have to pick on Brown??? There are shallow failures from every school. Okay, enough personal complaining.
I found the writing to be good, but it didn't sweep me away. The characters were boring, obsessed with themselves and their ideas, but not so much with others. They see their function as contributing their ideas, rather than their energy or labor, to society, which might be alright if their ideas were more useful. If Messud's goal was a satire of self-important Ivy-Leaguers, she was effective, but I got the impression that she really thought she had developed meaningful characters that people could learn from. Hmmm.
I was somewhat disappointed in how Messud used September 11 in her book--it is interesting to see how authors are approaching this (kind of interested in one reviewer's dissertation). I felt like she used it as a further excuse for her characters to do nothing, rather than as a real turning point for any of them. Again, being in the age group, a graduate of Brown, and thus acquainted with many people this age who are Ivy League graduates, I found these characters to be a poor representation--I think many people this age, of whatever background, are much more self-possessed, self-motivated, and more conscious of their role in society than these characters, most of whom I would probably actively avoid at parties. Most people learn from their introspection and from those around them, something these characters didn't master. If this was meant to be a satire, it fell short, and if it was meant to be an actual examination of these characters, if fell incredibly short.

I might be forgetting some details of the book, because I traded it at the used book store almost immediately upon completion, but my overall impression of this entire book was failure: failure of the characters to realize that WORK is required to reach goals, even if you are smart and well-educated, failure of the writer to differentiate among types of failure among the characters, failure of the writing to move beyond good to amazing. Perhaps most mysteriously, failure of the NYT book review to properly categorize this book as half-rate chick-lit.
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11/25/07

Laura rated it:

A last minute, impulsive buy at the airport, en route to France, that I thought I remembered reading really good things about. I read it on the plane, I read it in hotels, I read it on the train. At first, I thought, "she writes well and this is good." I have children younger than those in the book, so was interested in the fates and trajectories of her characters, even though several of them were pretty unlikeable. The more I read, the more I kept waiting for the good parts. By the ...more

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09/13/07

Kara added it

Read in September, 2007

On the cover of this book about people living in New York it says this book received the honor of "best book of the year" from the New York Times. Talk about navel contemplation, because I truly cannot understand why this book won any awards. The book is borderline horrid. It's as if each character is like the writer character in Sideways, so painful to watch that it's tempting to turn off the movie. Too much detail, too much wining, too much fuss about everything that takes away f...more

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05/06/07

Don Brown rated it:

Read in February, 2007

recommends it for: Fiction readers.

James Wood explains that the "novel exists to be affecting...to shake us profoundly. When we're rigorous about feeling, we're honoring that." The reader, then, should approach the text as a writer, "which is [about] making aesthetic judgments."

Claire Messud, the author of “The Emperor’s Children” is married to James Wood, noted critic published in “The Guardian”. His precise judgment of the purpose of the novel seemed like an interesting place to begin...more

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02/12/09

Peter added it

Read in December, 2008

Spoiled thirty-somethings in New York City seek greater self-importance while interesting poor kid tries to make good and is shunned. Yay. Why do I keep turning the pages?

Oh right, because I’m a thirty-something in New York City. Unfortunately, the thirty-somethings in the novel are very different (hopefully) and much less interesting (again, hopefully).

To her credit, Messud’s writing, aside from an occasional bout of hyperverbosity, is spot on; she captures the em...more

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02/05/08

Yulia rated it:

bookshelves: writers-on-writing

Read in January, 2006

This is my generation, what can I say? Educated in the best of institutions, overburdened by self-analysis, underemployed, wondering what it will all lead to after our parents have cut the umbilical cord finally. How could it not resonate?

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05/22/07

Michelle rated it:

I was excited to read this book since it had so much "buzz" surrounding it. While it was fine and read quickly, I found myself wondering "who cares?" None of the characters were particularly likeable and the plot wasn't very interesting.

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12/29/08

Jennifer rated it:

Read in February, 2009

recommends it for: voabulary enthusiast with a dictionary on hand

I have to admit that I didn't hate this book as much as many, MANY other people did (see reviews here or on Amazon). If we had the chance to rate books with half stars I would definitely give this book 3.5 stars. The first half of the book really grabbed my attention and the writing is beautiful (although at times I was distracted by the author's extensive vocabulary usage). The characters were not likable but I found them to be believable. I was hoping the author would delve deeper into the fri...more

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