The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
by Claire Messud
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.70 You Save: $15.25 (96%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
Book Review: Couldn't stand it.
Summary: 1 Stars
I was given the audio version of this book to listen to during my long commutes to and from work. I won't go into the annoyance factor of enduring 2 discs (there are like, 20 or something) of the narrator's awful work, but I will tell you that no matter who was narrating, this book cannot be redeemed even as an audio product, which I couldn't bear to simply listen to while staring at brakelights.
At first, I thought, you know - I just don't like this narrator. But it soon became very clear that it's the author's work I don't like. As an editor of almost 20 years, I have always subscribed to the "less is more" theory when it comes to the use of adjectives. Messud chokes the reader/listener with a ridiculous number of descriptive words piled on top of one another like a messy, sticky, gooey, sickenly sweet, 15 layer cake frosted with gobs of thick, whipped, pink, frilly, bright frosting that literally drips off the cake like ... (get my point?).
At one point I was rolling my eyes so much I almost caused a multi-car pile up on the beltway. Thank God I switched over to NPR or I could be dead right now!
If you like a good book, or something to pass the time in the car, don't bother with The Emperor Drops his Kids Off at the Pool. Seriously. :p
Janey's Jonze
(was once again not satisfied)
Book Review: A better Danielle Steel
Summary: 2 Stars
I remember filing away the NYT review when the hardback was originally published. To read the blurbs on the paperback (an impulse airport buy for a long flight), you'd think it was masterpiece. What a snoozer. The most delicious irony is the Ludovic Seely character asking whether the PEN awards have any meaning any longer. He's got a point.
The first PEN recognized novel I can remember reading was Walter Abish's "How German Is It." At the time, my junior year in college, I thought it was a great book. It didn't seem so substantial 25-years later when I reread it.
The next PEN recognized novel I read was the dreadful "Snow Falling On Cedars." I was dumbfounded when it won PEN recognition.
With "The Emperor's Children," we now have a trifecta of crappy to middling novels being given what is, was (?) considered a prestigious literary award.
The characters are trite, their situations are pedestrian, and the story could have been set in any large American city (except, perhaps, LA), in spite of it being hailed as a great portrait of contemporary life (mostly at the top) in NYC.
I guess the only thing that can be said of the book is that none of the characters is all that likable or even sympathetic, which is about as close to "real life" as this book comes.
Book Review: Goodbye to all that
Summary: 5 Stars
The year is 2001, and the month is March, so the characters in "The Emperor's Children" aren't aware that their lives won't be in the same in six months. Had they had the ability to foresee the future would they act differently? Would Marina work harder in her book? Or Danielle, not have an affair with the father of her best friend? Would have Bootie moved to New York? So many questions, so much speculation.
Since she can't tell what they would do, but what they did, writer Claire Messud keeps her two feet on the ground in her latest novel "The Emperor's Children". She is an author of amazing skills to bring to life her characters - only one of them is not thoroughly developed, but that doesn't diminish the quality of this novel.
If the narrative begins as an interesting comedy of manners, as the year passes times become darker, and lives, sadder - and "The Emperor's Children" deeper and deeper. At its core, this is a novel about our times, about what people have become, or how they lost their dreams and souls in order to achieve a higher ground.
Was it worthy it? Messud is not interested in bringing simples answers, not even leading readers to find them. This is a device that makes the reading of "The Emperor's Children" a
Book Review: Good writing, but maybe incoherent thematically?
Summary: 4 Stars
Messud is a great writer - her sentences are addictive, if indulgent. The characters in this book will feel instantly to familiar to anyone that's lived among the modern urban intelligentsia. For the vast majority of the population who has not done so, however, these characters may be a bit of shock - vain, introspective and ultimately very selfish. I suspect this is what drove a lot of readers away. The same faults which some of us will see as contemptible but also familiar (and forgivable?) appear as simply repulsive to most.
My only complaint about the book was that it seemed to use 9/11 as a convenient way to avoid resolving its various plot threads. Prior to the big event, the characters are all headed on a collision course, destined to destroy each other's lives. Instead, 9/11 serves as a bit of a "Get Out of Jail" card. The characters who most deserved their comeuppance never got it, and this proved, for me at least, unsatisfying.
This awkward ending undermines the novel's condemnation of its characters, and as a result, it feels a little incoherent thematically. This is a shame: what could have been a great, if not classic, book is instead just a rather lengthy inside joke for a certain class of urbanite.
Book Review: So many words, so little depth...
Summary: 2 Stars
The most fitting aspect of 'The Emperor's Children' may be the title!
The story itself shows everything, yet reveals nothing, 'exposing' itself as a bloated, verbose, thinly-plotted, sloppily-written soap opera. The reader is given few reasons to connect with, or even remotely care about, most of the cast(with the possible exception of Bootie).
All of the principals are vain and self-absorbed, and the importance of 9/11 is marginalized(almost, but not quite trivialized) by the characters' stereotypical reactions.
The author's intent seems buried beneath her labored, overly-punctuated, prose; if she is making a statement of some sort, for good or for ill, about New Yorkers in general, or simply those of the upper-class boomer-yuppie generations, then her point is muted by the endlessly rambling, tedious paragraphs.
Messud sets up the plot points well, despite her excesses, but cops out by drowning the chracters in a sea of inconclusiveness. The characters themselves are just sterotypically arrogant, entitled 'adult spoiled brats.'
The only real emotion most readers will be left with is relief that not everyone is as in love with themselves as the cast of this book!