The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
by Claire Messud
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Book Reviews of The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
Book Review: seriously flawed, over-hyped
Summary: 2 Stars
I don't mind reading about characters that are unsympathetic and dull -- if the story has a point. Unfortunately, this book has no story. The author adequately illustrates the nature of narcissism, vanity, and wanton conceit; but her theme runs around in circles (tediously!) and never goes anywhere. She dangles plot lines that never ripen, and allows all the characters to remain static, essentially unchanged by the events that unfold.
The movie "Election" is a good example of how entertaining static characters can be when the storyteller merges cynicism with wit. Cynicism merged with poignancy is also compelling. Too bad for Massud that her cynicism is flaccid and aimless. I kept waiting for the pay-off that never came.
The story could have worked perhaps as a tale of cultural malaise, but Massud does't have the edge and scope of an author like Tom Wolfe.
And I can only marvel at the breathless review printed on the back cover that praises the author for being flawless and elegant... I actually found myself highlighting sentences in the book and reading them to my husband at night -- for a good laugh! I can't recall ever reading so many clunky, tortured, obtuse sentences in a published book.
I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP! I can't locate some of my favorites because I encountered them while reading without a pen in hand, but here are a couple of samples:
From page 194: "Although possibly, it's true, thinking about all she couldn't say -- which boiled down to "Bootie, come home!" -- rather than about what he was actually whispering (he did fairly whisper, because his voice was naturally low, and because he didn't want the Thwaites to be disturbed) in her addled ear."
Here is a 137-word sentence from page 172: "A shrill man's voice silenced the room -- it was, Danielle could see, the bald editor in velvet who had claimed Murray Thwaite during cocktails -- and in echo droned and squeaked an annual recitation about the Journalists' Association and its marriage, back in the sixties, with the Writers Guild, giving birth to this unique organization in which writers of so many stripes might unite -- "Where the waratah and the bird of paradise conjoin," whispered Seeley, nodding at Madame Ballou, whose weakened chin appeared to tremble over her red jacket ad whose eyes grew heavy-lidded as the speech wore on; while behind her, several tables away but in an unimpeded visual line, sat the yellow silk torso he had noted earlier, topped by its long, eagerly quivering nose."
Some of the sentences have comically misplaced modifiers, some of them have multiple clauses offset by semicolons within clauses offset by hyphens, some of them are just plain weird.
From page 161: "Julius suggested a bath, a line or two of coke (this he had foreseen; and had separated a small portion of David's reserves for this use. He felt like his mother, fretting; but he hadn't wanted to countenance the possibility that the unknown Dale might go wild at the prospect of drugs in abundance, make a grab for the lot, deck his paramour, and flee), a porn video on the huge flat-screen TV hung on the living room wall."
Again, I would be more forgiving of a story that went nowhere if at least the writing were beautiful. In "The Emperor's Children," however, the writing is awkward, overwrought, and without rhythm.
I also found the use of 9/11 as a plot stunt near the end of the book to be jarring and a bit tacky.
The foregoing criticism is only part of the problem with Massud's book; the other part of the problem is the HYPE. I received the book as a gift from someone who bought two copies at once based upon the ecstatic reviews. She believed it to be the most consequential book of the year.
Indeed, the back cover brays that the novel is brilliant, flawless, engrossing, glistening with wit, refreshing, enchanting, ambitious, glamorous, gusty, kinetic, robust, canny, and searching. It purports that a consensus of credible periodicals had already found it to be one of the best books of the year. It promises the book to be a "great achievement" that will "likely be one of the most talked-about novels."
In some way, Massud is surely the poorer for having published her book in an era of silly praise inflation, in which every book is astonishing, amazing, breath-taking, and blah blah blah...
This book is not without merit; it's virtues are simply overcome by the weight of undue praise and disproportionate expectations.
Book Review: Navel-Gazing in Manhattan
Summary: 1 Stars
I remember hearing great things about this book when it came out about five years ago, but it was the kind of praise that didn't really resonate with me. Fast-forward to the present, and now having it read it, I can see why. The book is a truly mystifying mess of fairly stock characters engaged in the most egregious privileged Manhattanite navel-gazing imaginable, written in outrageously pretentious and contorted run-on sentences. I would have gladly abandoned the book after fifty pages in the presence of these vacuous people, but since this was a book club selection, I persevered to the bitter end.
The story revolves (more or less) around Murray Thwaite, an iconic middle-aged journalist who built a predictable (and rewarding) career as the kind of "conscience of the '60s generation" writer, with pompous and cliched liberal views are tempered enough to be palatable to a broad Democratic-voting audience. His beautiful daughter Marina adores him and is so overcome by his greatness that she's basically wasted the decade since she graduated Brown, and is just drifting along. Her Brown friends Danielle (single documentary producer) and Julius (gay literary critic and office temp) are similarly adrift in a 30something sea of angst, wishing to be doing something "important", but without any idea what that might be. Gliding by in the background is Murray's wife, who is a kind of modern version of the '50s housewife: a lawyer who helps troubled youth, and a wife who turns a blind eye to her husband's infidelities and excesses -- and not coincidentally, the only person in the book who actually is doing something worthwhile.
Fortunately, there are two characters who arrive to the scene who appear poised to wreak havoc to this insular world. The first is a smarmy Australian editor named Ludovic Seely who meets Danielle at a party and soon becomes romantically involved with Marina. He's been sent to New York by his Rupert Murdochian media conglomerate to launch an iconoclastic weekly magazine whose "telling it like it is" barbs will be aimed directly at the people who like Murray Twaite. Meanwhile, in a small town upstate, Murray's 19-year-old nephew Bootie Tubb plots to come to the big city and make something of himself, although again, what that is, is not clear. He's a kind of loner autodidact, keen to read and grapple with the great works of literature outside of the stultifying world of academia. And for a while, the story appears to be building toward a satisfying takedown of Twaite, only to have that fizzle into nothingness. Then 9/11 arrives, and the world is turned upside down, only not so much for the characters in the book. To be sure, it affects them, but not in any considerable way -- aside from Bootie. It would be spoiling things to say what happens to him, but it's far from satisfying and involves a fairly outrageous coincidence. (Perhaps this is the book's most salient point? That that even 9/11 can't get these flawed people to be honest with themselves for even a moment?)
I guess the book did succeed in one regard -- our bookclub spent an engaging 90 minutes trying to figure out what the point of it all was. One could almost make an interesting case that it's a thinly veiled right-wing attack on wishy-washy liberals and their Manhattan Mecca. It's not at all clear whether the author is satirizing her characters or sympathizing with them, or both at once, or trying to do the first while unconsciously doing the second... Whatever the case, another reviewer pointed out the danger of exploring vacuity over 400 pages, and in my reading, this book falls down its own rabbit hole. In an interview, the author said "In some sort of grandiose way, I thought of the emperor as the broader culture, if that makes any sense. It's about the times that we live in." I guess I can't fault the ambition, but any book about "the times we live in" is all but destined to fail -- and in failing to present a single iota of original perspective, this one surely does.
Book Review: Didn't like the characters but liked the book
Summary: 4 Stars
It's hard to read, and obviously to write, any book that takes place in the New York of September 2001. Ultimately, no matter what the purported subject matter of the book, the story ends up being about that day, that event. The writer runs the risk of being accused of either including 9/11 to make a political statement or alternatively, if the author ignores the tragedy, s/he can be accused of minimizing what happened. It's a lose/lose situation.
All through "The Emperor's Children", I kept crossing days off the mental calendar in my head. I knew what was coming, even though the characters did not. It was impossible for me to shed this knowledge...which might be one of the reasons I felt such impatience with the incredibly self-absorbed characters that are the emperor's children. Halfway through the book, I was almost eager for them to arrive at September 2001 so that the events of that day (month, really) might smack them across the face and make them think for 2 seconds about something outside their entitled little lives. (I won't go so far as to say I hoped one of them might schedule a breakfast meeting in lower Manhattan that Tuesday morning, but I wouldn't have shed any tears had one of them done so.) I guess Messud might have/probably meant Julian, Marine, Danielle and Murray to represent the US and our inability to see ourselves as part of the world instead of the most important thing(s) in it...but that certainly didn't make me like these people...
I have a disadvantage as a reader in that it's hard for me to like a book in which I can't find ONE character to like or to sympathize with or at the very least, to relate to. (My friend Jennifer is always disappointed in me for this flaw.) The only character in TEC I might have had a chance with was Annabel...but she remains so fare removed from anything that happens in the book that she is little more than a ghost character, a placeholder.
There were a few lines I made note of. When Murray (the emperor of sorts) is considering whether his daughter is special (like he is) or simply ordinary, he thinks, "Wasn't irrelevance, 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? And then he thought of Marina, raised as he'd wished to have been raised, and stymied, now, by the very lack of smallness, by the absence of any limitations against to rebel."
The one character we are supposed to root for, I suppose, Frederick/Bootie, comes from that small life and has much against he can rebel. He is ensconced for a short while in the sheltered circle around Murray, given privileges but does not embrace them as the others do. Instead, he drifts too close and then is burned. "...surely this was where the man's greatness lay. How could Bootie have failed to understand? Because, of course, it guaranteed, it predetermined his own failure; and there had been too much at stake for him in that. Until now: this (9/11), the end of the world as he knew it, had known it, changed everything. The Tower of Babel tumbling. An end to false idols. And Murray, whose greatness lay not in his words or his actions but simply in his capacity to convince people of his greatness, starting, naturally, with himself..."
Although Murray is the most obviously self-absorbed character in this novel, all of them are insufferable. Danielle is far more upset by her love life than by the massive death and destruction right outside her door, Marina lives at home at the age of 30 but doesn't want to get an "unimportant" job...the list goes on.
And yet? Despite all of this - I have written one of my longest reviews ever. I suppose "The Emperor's Children" gave me more food for thought than I realized...hmmmm...
Book Review: Had to drop this bore after page 75.
Summary: 1 Stars
The back cover of this book reads, "In this tour de force, celebrated author Claire Messud brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment." Hmmm. According to whom? Her publisher?
First, the story is set in NYC, but it could be anywhere. Messud does nothing to bring NY to life (at least in the first 75 pages). None of the characters interact with the city or its attractions or institutions. Second, the story is about "three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties." Hmmm. The cusp of my 30s was not that long ago, and the characters in this book are much more reminiscent of adults in their mid-twenties. Messud is off; she tried, but she must not know the generation about which she wrote. Finally - "the way we live in this moment"? Huh? Partly due to the effort and time spent trying to weed through the longest sentences I have ever had the displeasure of discovering over and over again (in the same paragraph, on the same page, over and over again), the moments moved so slowly all sense of life & momentum was lost.
Messud tries to give her characters substance, but her efforts fall short. The characters lack personality and convincing emotion, and their relationships feel trivial. All too quickly it becomes clear how Messud wants us to see each of her characters. She spoon-feeds her readers with lines that feel contrived and never quite paint the picture she is trying to conceive. For example, rather than being told things like "for years Murray had done X when he thought about Y . . . and now he was doing it again . . . " or "the wrinkle in Marina's brow was a sign she felt X about her father," I would have much rather discovered this on my own. In my opinion, a skillful writer can use metaphors and language to describe memories, expressions, body language, and dialogue well enough to spark the reader's interest and lead them to conclusions of their own - the very ones the author intended! This talent, however, is beyond Messud. Her attempts to bring her readers down a particular line of thinking/believing are transparent and amateur at best; this is one of the many weaknesses that prevents Messud's writing from feeling intelligent.
Aside from when the book was in my hands, never once did I find myself thinking of the plot or any of the characters in this story. I was neither given enough substance to develop an understanding of any one of the Emperor's children nor was I teased with enough promise to bring me to keep reading. I never wondered what would happen to . . . anyone! or about . . . anything! I began to feel nothing was going to happen. I can't begin to describe the plot. If there is one, I guess it's just whether these grown-up kids, on the cusp of their 30s, figure life out. There wasn't any sign of developing love, mystery, conflict, tension, insight, or humor in the first 75 pages, so how much more would I have had to endure until I cared? (Based on other reviews, it seems it would have been a long wait!).
As I've said, The Emperor's Children lacks momentum. There's nothing juicy between the pages . . . nothing to indicate finishing the book will take the reader anywhere new or that the characters and their relationships are worth enduring. I'll stop here. After all, I only read 75 pages. If you pay for the shipping, I'll gladly send you the book for free.
Book Review: The Emperor Revisited
Summary: 3 Stars
Yes - I can't help it - I too am a little perplexed at why Claire Messud's THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN raked in as many accolades as it did. It is, in fact, a solidly good book, full of evocative imagery and narrative momentum, but it is no more than that. The plot (already recounted many times) is foremost the tale of three young adults (or, well, not-so-young adults) attempting to make a go of it in the literary circles of New York, while living in the shadow of "the Emperor" - the pompous intellectual celebrity Murray Thwaite, equal parts pedant, pundit, and gadfly. Meanwhile, Murray's nephew Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, a self-teacher, Emersonian, and budding journalistic terrorist, stakes out his own claim on intellectual authenticity by leaving backwoods Watertown, NY, for the fabled big city, where of course he suffers inevitable disillusionment, and so on and so on.
It seems apparent that THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN is an attempt by Ms. Messud to recall the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century comedies of manners and fish-out-of-water social novels (by the likes of Edith Wharton, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, et al), and perhaps this is why her prose feels so prim and starchy. One of my particular pet peeves about this writing is how Ms. Messud frequently incorporates Bristishisms into the narrative, such as fancy (as a verb), peckish, bloody, and lift. I kept flipping back to the About the Author blurb to see if she was in fact British herself, but she's from Massachusetts. Then I wondered if she realized that Americans don't speak this way. And, after that, I wondered if this was a story about Americans with pretensions or just a pretentious story about Americans. True, one of the characters gives voice to the opinion (I'm paraphrasing) that pretension is necessary in life - but nevertheless, when it's clumsy, it's also embarrassing. (Think of Madonna's faux British accent, for example.)
Also, there has been much comment upon Ms. Messud's unwieldy sentences. It isn't so much that they are long; it's that she enjoys interrupting them with very long interpolations between dashes or commas, and then she finishes her original clause, expecting the reader to remember what she was originally saying. This sentence structure just doesn't work well and drags down the narrative.
Ms. Messud is stylistically idiosyncratic, to say the least. She has found - it would seem - the styles and formulae she likes, and she employs them again and again. I wish I had a nickel, for example, for every time she used a personal pronoun and then followed it with the proper name (between commas) to whom the pronoun referred. If there is a need to explain who it is you mean when you use a pronoun, then common sense might suggest that you leave out the pronoun altogether.
This may all seem very harping and petty, but it's Ms. Messud's prissy style which keeps her novel from being much greater. She evidently has a gift for imagery and storytelling but is the kind of author, like Bootie perhaps, who pines for an ideal: a literary ideal of prose that is stiff, polite, and almost strangely Victorian at times.