The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
by Claire Messud
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Book Reviews of The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
Book Review: New York, New York...Manhattan, Manhattan...
Summary: 5 Stars
Messud is a wonderful writer and I give her alot of credit for being able to capture Manhattan (and all of its ridiculousness) in all its details. Most of us, never even for a day, have lives which include galas, lavishly catered dinner parties, and all-you can-eat&drink caviar/top shelf champagne. Shopping on 5th Ave. and nonchalantly mentioning a need to "go buy a dress at Anna Sui or Dolce & Gabbana" is, again, not very accessible to the majority of the world. Not many women I know at 29 years old can afford to spend $5000 "nonchalantly" at a moments notice. This is the reason why I think that maybe some readers may misconstrue this novel and write it off immediately as a "poor piece of writing."
I loved this book. Living in Phila., I am a close neighbor of Manhattan and have many friends living there; Thus, I have to admit I knew exactly where Messud was going with this when finishing early chapters. Self-entitlement, pretentiousness, and absolute shallowness are adjectives for ALL the characters in this finely weaved novel, and rightly so. (Most of us have seen at least one episode of "Sex & the City" right?) Messud particularly captures the "approaching 30" generation in NY so well. Their brattiness, obliviousness to world politics, & their refusal to grow up and be independent are all portrayed very well in Messud's writing style. (Her long sentences are fine. I do not know why people have such a problem with it. What about Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, & Gabriel Garcia Marquez?)
The ending was a bit abrupt and left the reader feeling like the last couple chapters were ripped away by accident. That was my only complaint with it. On a scale of 1 - 10, I give this book a 9.
Book Review: Vapid and Shockingly Bad - throw this book into a 'murky cistern'
Summary: 1 Stars
I picked up this book up for a book club and I have not attempted to read anything so completely awful in a long time. Devastatingly vapid soap-opera dialogue allows zero sympathy with the characters. These people are reality-TV rejects glued across a cartoon New York, with a little bit of 'Gossip Girl' limp intrigue thrown in. These are the kind of women who loose weight before a wedding because they're stressed out. Of course! How convenient!
Halting and badly edited writing forces you to re-read long, empty sentences. A sample from p. 107:
"One thing at least was certain: he hadn't left Watertown for the Big Y out Route 9, which was no different from the possibilities - Annies Truck Stop, for example, off the Interstate - with which he had taunted his mother at home.... His friend had missed the point of him entirely, was no true friend. Let Wendy, whoever she was, contend with the slime in the refrigerator drawers; let Wendy try to tackle the defective flusher on the toilet, which required frequent arm-dunking into the murky cistern to retrieve the detached flusher chain, glinting like pirate's treasure at the bottom of a well." - Oh really!?
You will want to throw this book into a 'murky cistern'.
I am honestly shocked at how terrible this book is and have no explanation for the sparkling reviews from major publications. I am perplexed at the book club's choice to read this book. Read Henry James, read Edith Wharton, read Henry Miller, read anything but this horrifically awful book.
Book Review: Another example of the "New York Novel"
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very long novel (nearly 500 pages) set almost entirely in NYC. Some have said that the typical NYC novel is something you wouldn't read except that it is set in the City. To be sure, the storyline here is thin to say the least; the remarkable thing is how well the author takes the skeleton of a story and fills it out through character development. Unfortunately, I found that absolutely none of the characters in this novel was likeable, commendable, or even particularly interesting. But several things need to be said. First, the book bristles with authenticity when the City becomes the key character--such as when one character first arrives in the City and is simply overwhelmed by the cacophony and vortex of difference races, languages, stimulations, and frustrations that makes NYC the remarkable place that it is. Moreover, when the story progresses to the point of 9/11, and how that horrid event affects these New Yorkers, the novel really hits its stride and becomes quite poignant. Unfortunately, this transition occurs almost at the conclusion of this very long read. It should also be said that the author absolutely nails several representative NYC characters in her dissection of them: the public intellectual; the do-gooder upper West Side juvenile legal aid attorney; and the ambitious magazine publisher. So there are many good points about the novel and it keeps the reader's interest, though it does tend to drag at points. Particularly those who know NYC should find it interesting enough to merit a read.Book Review: Overhyped, over-written and under-interesting
Summary: 3 Stars
I went into this book thinking I wouldn't like it. And, throughout much of the book, I didn't enjoy it so much as push inexorably onward to the end, hoping to find something. Unlike some reviewers, I really enjoyed the parts concerning 9/11 and found the emotional response to that even to be genuine. Unfortunately, Messud has no style, no voice, merely prattling onward about despicable characters and their self-important issues and neuroses. This seems like an attempt to rewrite The Corrections, a far better novel, creative, with a wide spread of different characters (Messud seems to reuse the same character in different clothes; perhaps she thinks people are suddenly less diverse and interesting than they once were), depicting the moral emptiness of contemporary life and the problems with one's relatives and the expectations of the world. I read more than half the book in one day and I suppose that is the major draw of Messud's repetitive, murky writing: somehow the ugly tragedy draws the audience in, not unlike a talk show where the "guests" attack each other and we stayed tuned for the tragic ending. Unfortunately, the characters are repulsive, undriven and lazy, expecting some sort of grand idea or scheme to merely fall into their laps. If this is how Messud sees the people around her, or how New Yorkers think of themselves, then we, as a culture, have some serious issues to attend to.Book Review: Excellent... Until the End... A Five Star Descent into Three
Summary: 3 Stars
Until its final chapters, The Emperor's Children is a witty and absorbing tale of the New York punditocracy. Messud draws the reader into a richly peopled world through the use of intelligent prose and a multi-faceted plotline that plumbs the lives of a revered investigative journalist with a secret life, his admirable wife, his beautiful if unfocused daughter, and his intelligent but painfully naive nephew. The cast of characters is rounded out by three young journalists: a sometime columnist for the Village Voice, a sharply ambitious magazine editor, and a documentary filmmaker.
Messud's eye for detail and ear for dialogue keep the reader turning the pages, and her characters are drawn with both sympathy and vinegar, potently revealing their strengths and flaws. This is a novel that cries out for a resolution that allows its characters to transcend their frailties and realize their strengths, both individually and collectively.
Unfortunately, Messud chooses to leave her protagonists largely scattered and bewildered in the wake of September 11. While this may be a realistic choice (and one that certainly echoes Messud's recurring theme of "the Emperor has no clothes"), it makes for a tentative and unsatisfying conclusion to what otherwise would have been an absorbing novel. As it is, the novel's tepid denouement undercuts its effectiveness.