***1/2

None of the central characters in The Emperor's Children are very likable people, though they aren't portrayed without some sympathy. Murray Thwaite is an egotistical, two-faced ivy tower intellectual used to being fawned over by the media. His overindulged daughter, Marina, is "taking a year off" for a fatuous writing project, but is barely working on it. She gets involved with Ludovic Seeley, an ambitious, Machiavellian Australian who intends to launch a magazine. Murray's nephew, Bootie, cultivates a creepy, parasitic idealism reminiscent of Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. The other main players have comparable flaws.

Messud takes her unpleasant cast and sets their lives in speeding motion, like billiard balls on a table, gleefully letting them race towards their inevitable collisions. Later in the book, the September 11 attacks occur, creating their own complications in everyone's lives -- which have little to do with the death and destruction, of course. It's a scathing glimpse at the underside of the privileged NYC elite, focusing on their self-absorption and sense of entitlement. I kept reading because I'm an urban dweller who hangs out with a few Ivy League grads and the personas, lifestyle, and issues in the book struck some familiar notes (though my friends are much more likable people), and because I couldn't look away from the tower of hubris about to collapse.

Some of the things that seem to have bothered other readers weren't that much of an issue for me. To me, the pretentiousness of Messud's sophisticated language was deliberate and fit the tone of the novel. Plus, it worked just fine in audio, once I got used to it. However, I did find her cynicism a bit exhausting, even if I enjoyed the plot. The characters are a bit caricatured, offering little to redeem the liberal intelligensia that they're supposed to reflect, and Messud doesn't offer much that's positive about any other way of being. Yes, I often pitied these flawed people, sometimes identified with them, and sometimes wanted to see them get their well-deserved comeuppance, but it felt that Messud was so bent on skewering her own world that she also disposed of anything beautiful or authentic about it.

Still, I enjoyed this book and its plotting. If, like me, you're an urban dweller who sometimes find yourself at cocktail parties with people from this world, you might get something out of this scathing drama of its aspirants and pretenders.