Danielle, a junior television producer, is on the hunt for the documentary idea that will make her reputation; Marina, the beautiful daughter of a famous and wealthy liberal journalist and intellectual, is desperate to prove her worth - while unsure exactly of how this is to be achieved; Julius, a freelance writer of devastating book reviews, is determined to live a fabulous Manhattan lifestyle on a budget of nothing at all. "The Emperor's Children" follows these three friends - and their overlapping social and family circles - through their day-to-day lives, their perceived struggles and successes and their constant search for meaning and authenticity. Sweeping in scope, minutely perceptive about the nuances of Manhattan life, with richly drawn characters and vivid prose, "The Emperor's Children" is a finely textured portrait of a particular place at a particular moment - and a haunting illustration how the events of a single day can change everything, for ever. It reveals Claire Messud as a novelist in bloom, writing at the height of her powers.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Marina Thwaite, Danielle Minkoff and Julian Clarke were buddies at Brown, certain that they would soon do something important in the world. But as all near 30, Danielle is struggling as a TV documentary maker, and Julius is barely surviving financially as a freelance critic. Marina, the startlingly beautiful daughter of celebrated social activist, journalist and hob-nobber Murray Thwaite, is living with her parents on the Upper West Side, unable to finish her book"titled The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes (on how changing fashions in children's clothes mirror changes in society). Two arrivals upset the group stasis: Ludovic, a fiercely ambitious Aussie who woos Marina to gain entrée into society (meanwhile planning to destroy Murray's reputation), and Murray's nephew, Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, an immature, idealistic college dropout and autodidact who is determined to live the life of a New York intellectual. The group orbits around the post"September 11 city with disconcerting entitlement"and around Murray, who is, in a sense, the emperor. Messud, in her fourth novel, remains wickedly observant of pretensions"intellectual, sexual, class and gender. Her writing is so fluid, and her plot so cleverly constructed, that events seem inevitable, yet the narrative is ultimately surprising and masterful as a contemporary comedy of manners. 100,00 announced first printing; author tour.(Sept. 4)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
In this witty examination of New York's chattering classes, which opens in the spring of 2001, the despot of the title is Murray Thwaite, a famous journalist who made his name in the Vietnam era. The next generation, however, is having trouble gaining traction. Murray's daughter, Marina, unable to complete a long-overdue book on the cultural significance of children's clothing, has moved back into her parents' Upper West Side apartment and is doing a lot of yoga. Her two best friends—Danielle, a television producer, and Julius, a gay freelance critic—are similarly ambitious and entitled, without being particularly driven. All three find sex the easiest way to transform themselves. Only Murray's brainy and profoundly disenfranchised nephew from upstate aggressively pursues his belief in the true and the good, but he proves to be a sort of literary terrorist, threatening to blow the family apart. The humorous intimacies of Messud's portraits do not, finally, soften the judgments behind them: If this is what's become of the liberal imagination, is it worth fighting for?
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Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker
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Customer Reviews
“ Much has been said about the lack of plot, the lack of character development and PARTICULARLY the poor sentence structure which makes it very difficult to read. ”
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
349 of 422 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Since many reviewers have discussed the story line in detail, I will stick with my overall impressions of what I consider an extremely over hyped disappointing read.
In my opinion, none of the main characters are anywhere near as adorable as the author keeps insisting they are. Their most notable characteristic is a non-stop (and rather interchangeable) flow of campy repartee that might convey intellect, success, pretension, heartbreak, or whatever to someone steeped in their milieu but which kept me at a considerable emotional distance. The doomed idol, Murray Thwaite, in particular is dreadfully flimsy - is this the author's dream of an articulate, handsome, talented, unattainable (for others who wish to be him) Golden Boy. This sort of wish fulfillment at the reader's expense is simply unpalatable to the serious consumer. And, if this was to be a tongue in cheek attempt at humor, it fell far short of the mark.
I agree with other reviewers. It appears the author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. Are we to be impressed with the overuse of commas and dependent clauses so that it often takes two or three readings to render a sentence understandable? If this is the new era of grown-up writing, I'll stick to my mysteries and nonfiction.
But, I kept at it hoping that Messud would indeed pull it off in the end; however, the ending too was quite unsatisfactory. And, the use of the 9/11 tragedy to try to wrap it up is unforgivable. If so many New Yorkers of this age group truly were so wrapped in their own petty self-absorptions during this time period, God save our country. Could any of the characters see outside their own small contrived world? It would appear not. I won't be reading any more of Messud's work.
If you're hoping for a plot, forget it. You can just read a page and sit back and admire Messud's gift for metaphor, prose and description. But plot and character development are as thin as deli cheese and just about as smelly. It's sadly true, but all of these characters stink, for one reason or another.
Do yourself a favor, don't buy the book. If you've read the hype and still think it's worth it, check it out from a library or borrow a copy. In fact, let me know, I'll send you mine. The only thing it's good for is keeping coffee rings off my desk.
In my opinion, none of the main characters are anywhere near as adorable as the author keeps insisting they are. Their most notable characteristic is a non-stop (and rather interchangeable) flow of campy repartee that might convey intellect, success, pretension, heartbreak, or whatever to someone steeped in their milieu but which kept me at a considerable emotional distance. The doomed idol, Murray Thwaite, in particular is dreadfully flimsy - is this the author's dream of an articulate, handsome, talented, unattainable (for others who wish to be him) Golden Boy. This sort of wish fulfillment at the reader's expense is simply unpalatable to the serious consumer. And, if this was to be a tongue in cheek attempt at humor, it fell far short of the mark.
I agree with other reviewers. It appears the author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. Are we to be impressed with the overuse of commas and dependent clauses so that it often takes two or three readings to render a sentence understandable? If this is the new era of grown-up writing, I'll stick to my mysteries and nonfiction.
But, I kept at it hoping that Messud would indeed pull it off in the end; however, the ending too was quite unsatisfactory. And, the use of the 9/11 tragedy to try to wrap it up is unforgivable. If so many New Yorkers of this age group truly were so wrapped in their own petty self-absorptions during this time period, God save our country. Could any of the characters see outside their own small contrived world? It would appear not. I won't be reading any more of Messud's work.
If you're hoping for a plot, forget it. You can just read a page and sit back and admire Messud's gift for metaphor, prose and description. But plot and character development are as thin as deli cheese and just about as smelly. It's sadly true, but all of these characters stink, for one reason or another.
Do yourself a favor, don't buy the book. If you've read the hype and still think it's worth it, check it out from a library or borrow a copy. In fact, let me know, I'll send you mine. The only thing it's good for is keeping coffee rings off my desk.
39 of 44 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The authoress gave the best review of her own stuff. Quoting from page 322: " Call me old-fashioned, but in my world a book-if only on account of the trees chopped down to produce it; but for many other reasons as well-should justify its existence. It must have a raison d'ętre. I just don't see one here. I'm sorry".
What remains a mystery to me is how this manuscript made its way into mainstream publishing and moreover got such hyperbolic praise. Is there a "literary" mafia?
What remains a mystery to me is how this manuscript made its way into mainstream publishing and moreover got such hyperbolic praise. Is there a "literary" mafia?
70 of 85 people found the following review helpful
By Gary Malone
Format:Hardcover
You've really got to worry about a novel when a *favourable* reviewer describes the plot's two main set pieces and one of them is when the cat dies. [The Economist, 19 Aug 2006.] Before getting into that, however, try this sample sentence for size:
"He remembered his father's telling him - his father, small as he was himself tall, with sloping shoulders off which Murray feared, as a child, the braces might slip, a bow-tied little man with an almost Hitlerian mustache, softened from menace by its grayness, and by the softness, insidious softness, of his quiet voice, a softness that belied his rigidity and tireless industry, his humorless and ultimately charmless 'goodness' (Why had she married him? She'd been so beautiful, and such fun) - telling him, as he deliberated on his path at Harvard, to choose accounting, or economics, saying, with that dreaded certainty, 'You see, Murray, I know you want to go out and write books or something like that. But only geniuses can be writers, Murray, and frankly son ...'"
[p. 124]
See what I mean about size? Reviewers have already complained about the author's self-interrupting, drunkenly digressive prose style. They are entirely correct to do so. Claire Messud's book is festooned with sentences which are essentially motorway pile-ups of sub-clauses, codicils and parenthetical interpolations. Such a rookie mistake - which makes for hopelessly cumbersome reading - should never have made it past the editor.
The Emperor's Children concerns the lives of Danielle, Marina and Julius, three thirtysomething New York literati and their patriarch, the essayist Murray Thwaite, Marina's father. Onto this scene arrive two more brains: Ludovic Seeley is a viperish and talented journalist from Australia who has come to NY to launch a new magazine; and Bootie Tubb is Thwaite's bookish college-drop-out nephew, who has taken up residence (and employment) at his uncle's home. In summary, all six of Ms. Messud's characters are part of a literary intelligentsia. So she's a writer writing about writers. Which is what bad writers shorn of ideas always do (think Stephen King). With such lack of variety among its dramatis personae, one is left to wonder how the book's jacket can make the breathtaking claim to be about 'the way we live in this moment'. Does Ms. Messud presume that the ruminations of six Manhattanites parked in front of their word processors will have something to say to ambulance drivers? Surfers? Teenagers? I like to write occasionally, and even I quickly grew tired of these navel-gazers. Perhaps the cruel joke Ms. Messud has played on herself is that only self-absorbed people presume that all others are like them, and will therefore relate to self-absorbed characters.
Anyway, the praxis of the book is set in motion by nothing more original than Seeley's aim to expose Thwaite as an intellectual fraud of some sort. Once this rather abstract goal is announced, nothing at all happens. We sit around for several hundred pages awaiting the unmasking. It never happens. (The cat has died some time before, its passing memorialised with an entire chapter.) The life of the mind is an indolent one, and so the time must thus be passed with sex. Danielle has an affair with Seeley; Seeley has an affair with Marina; and - ridiculously - Thwaite has an affair with Danielle. Ms. Messud also finds time to go into the details of Julius's gay love life with tiresomely squeamish prurience - beneath the willfully nonchalant prose one can sense a novelist delighted by her own daring.
There are silly mistakes. Since Bootie quickly becomes disillusioned with his uncle and correspondingly determined to expose him, he essentially clones Seeley's role: the reader is now left wondering why we now have two characters doing the same thing. As for Seeley himself, he inexplicably marries the daughter of the man he wants to destroy - a bit socially awkward, that. If Bootie is so precociously well-read, why does he seem surprised to discover that Ireland is divided? But perhaps his ignorance reflects that of his creator, who incorrectly informs us that Ireland has 'a border in the middle' [p. 186]. (The border is in the north-east corner, partitions off only one-fifth of the island, and never reaches the west coast.) Messud writes that Thwaite 'blew smoke though his nose like a dragon' [p. 305], forgetting that this is now her third time using that expression.
There's intellectual spivvery. So much literary name-dropping goes on, but it all consists of obvious choices. Situations are repeatedly described as 'Beckettian'; Bootie is reading Tolstoy, Melville and Emerson ... but there's nothing in these references to indicate that Messud has done any more that *hear about* these writers. It's all paper-thin. And the ambitious Seeley's inspiration is ... Napoleon.
Suddenly, September 11 irrupts into the plot. Our flawed-but-lovable characters respond in their various ways: Seeley grieves copiously for the new magazine he was about to launch but now never will; Thwaite's wife gets her hair done; Bootie changes his name to an even sillier one and inexplicably disappears (and not before time, some readers might may say). So if this intrusion of a harsh and savage reality has no effect on our characters, why was it mentioned at all? To rob from real life a luridly exciting climax that the author hadn't the talent to create herself?
It's plain from the 'way we live now' claim that the book is trying to boldly capture the Zeitgeist, but the entire plot takes place in the minds of its characters, and the space in which they move is thus correspondingly constricted. The novel feels not so much like it's taking place in an era as in one rather stuffy, overpriced apartment.
I have found that there is a yawning gulf of difference between the public response to this book and the critical one. A while back I listened to two members of the New York literary intelligentsia (Stephen Metcalf, Katie Roiphe) being interviewed about the novel on Slate. Surprise, surprise: they both liked it. Metcalf even did some name-dropping of his own: Edith Wharton, Zadie Smith, David Lodge we all parachuted in. But even the comparisons he meant unkindly were too flattering.
Thus the literati peer deeply into the Emperor's Children's subtext, apparently unable to say the plain truth currently being howled by readers in general (and there for all to see): the book is a poor read and it has little to say.
"He remembered his father's telling him - his father, small as he was himself tall, with sloping shoulders off which Murray feared, as a child, the braces might slip, a bow-tied little man with an almost Hitlerian mustache, softened from menace by its grayness, and by the softness, insidious softness, of his quiet voice, a softness that belied his rigidity and tireless industry, his humorless and ultimately charmless 'goodness' (Why had she married him? She'd been so beautiful, and such fun) - telling him, as he deliberated on his path at Harvard, to choose accounting, or economics, saying, with that dreaded certainty, 'You see, Murray, I know you want to go out and write books or something like that. But only geniuses can be writers, Murray, and frankly son ...'"
[p. 124]
See what I mean about size? Reviewers have already complained about the author's self-interrupting, drunkenly digressive prose style. They are entirely correct to do so. Claire Messud's book is festooned with sentences which are essentially motorway pile-ups of sub-clauses, codicils and parenthetical interpolations. Such a rookie mistake - which makes for hopelessly cumbersome reading - should never have made it past the editor.
The Emperor's Children concerns the lives of Danielle, Marina and Julius, three thirtysomething New York literati and their patriarch, the essayist Murray Thwaite, Marina's father. Onto this scene arrive two more brains: Ludovic Seeley is a viperish and talented journalist from Australia who has come to NY to launch a new magazine; and Bootie Tubb is Thwaite's bookish college-drop-out nephew, who has taken up residence (and employment) at his uncle's home. In summary, all six of Ms. Messud's characters are part of a literary intelligentsia. So she's a writer writing about writers. Which is what bad writers shorn of ideas always do (think Stephen King). With such lack of variety among its dramatis personae, one is left to wonder how the book's jacket can make the breathtaking claim to be about 'the way we live in this moment'. Does Ms. Messud presume that the ruminations of six Manhattanites parked in front of their word processors will have something to say to ambulance drivers? Surfers? Teenagers? I like to write occasionally, and even I quickly grew tired of these navel-gazers. Perhaps the cruel joke Ms. Messud has played on herself is that only self-absorbed people presume that all others are like them, and will therefore relate to self-absorbed characters.
Anyway, the praxis of the book is set in motion by nothing more original than Seeley's aim to expose Thwaite as an intellectual fraud of some sort. Once this rather abstract goal is announced, nothing at all happens. We sit around for several hundred pages awaiting the unmasking. It never happens. (The cat has died some time before, its passing memorialised with an entire chapter.) The life of the mind is an indolent one, and so the time must thus be passed with sex. Danielle has an affair with Seeley; Seeley has an affair with Marina; and - ridiculously - Thwaite has an affair with Danielle. Ms. Messud also finds time to go into the details of Julius's gay love life with tiresomely squeamish prurience - beneath the willfully nonchalant prose one can sense a novelist delighted by her own daring.
There are silly mistakes. Since Bootie quickly becomes disillusioned with his uncle and correspondingly determined to expose him, he essentially clones Seeley's role: the reader is now left wondering why we now have two characters doing the same thing. As for Seeley himself, he inexplicably marries the daughter of the man he wants to destroy - a bit socially awkward, that. If Bootie is so precociously well-read, why does he seem surprised to discover that Ireland is divided? But perhaps his ignorance reflects that of his creator, who incorrectly informs us that Ireland has 'a border in the middle' [p. 186]. (The border is in the north-east corner, partitions off only one-fifth of the island, and never reaches the west coast.) Messud writes that Thwaite 'blew smoke though his nose like a dragon' [p. 305], forgetting that this is now her third time using that expression.
There's intellectual spivvery. So much literary name-dropping goes on, but it all consists of obvious choices. Situations are repeatedly described as 'Beckettian'; Bootie is reading Tolstoy, Melville and Emerson ... but there's nothing in these references to indicate that Messud has done any more that *hear about* these writers. It's all paper-thin. And the ambitious Seeley's inspiration is ... Napoleon.
Suddenly, September 11 irrupts into the plot. Our flawed-but-lovable characters respond in their various ways: Seeley grieves copiously for the new magazine he was about to launch but now never will; Thwaite's wife gets her hair done; Bootie changes his name to an even sillier one and inexplicably disappears (and not before time, some readers might may say). So if this intrusion of a harsh and savage reality has no effect on our characters, why was it mentioned at all? To rob from real life a luridly exciting climax that the author hadn't the talent to create herself?
It's plain from the 'way we live now' claim that the book is trying to boldly capture the Zeitgeist, but the entire plot takes place in the minds of its characters, and the space in which they move is thus correspondingly constricted. The novel feels not so much like it's taking place in an era as in one rather stuffy, overpriced apartment.
I have found that there is a yawning gulf of difference between the public response to this book and the critical one. A while back I listened to two members of the New York literary intelligentsia (Stephen Metcalf, Katie Roiphe) being interviewed about the novel on Slate. Surprise, surprise: they both liked it. Metcalf even did some name-dropping of his own: Edith Wharton, Zadie Smith, David Lodge we all parachuted in. But even the comparisons he meant unkindly were too flattering.
Thus the literati peer deeply into the Emperor's Children's subtext, apparently unable to say the plain truth currently being howled by readers in general (and there for all to see): the book is a poor read and it has little to say.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The world of chance and choice
Life presents love and shock to these New Yorkers. Very well written with vivid characters a reader can relate to.
Published 2 days ago by sarah
1.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't finish it!
This is,without a doubt, the most boring book I've tried to "get through". The plot is non existent, the characters are dull-in short the story rambles all over the damn place... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Jean Richmond
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too wordy
The author's style was writing very long sentances with words and phrases that were uncommon, making the text confusing at times. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Donna Hart
3.0 out of 5 stars
Yay I finished it. Yawn.
I had never stumbled upon anything quite like it- a show off of supposedly innovative choice of syntax and language but I have to say it fails to impress me. Read more
Published 3 months ago by kitty
4.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book!
I was drawn into the characters' worlds. Moved. I have no idea how difficult it is to write a novel. Years of labor, no? I could identify with the characters. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Richard Burns
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horribly written
I should have read the reviews before I started the book! I'm on page 20 and I can't read any more. The writing is painfully terrible - full of run on sentences, commas,... Read more
Published 4 months ago by A. Warren
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book made me furious
I've been dying to review this book since I read it years ago, and never got around to it. Finally, I can say that this is the most overhyped book I've ever had the misfortune to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by cinephile126
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great take on young lives in NYC
I loved it! It was a highly entertaining peek into the lives of overachievers, spoiled brats, and young people in turmoil trying to navigate their way through life in the big... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Shari B. Sitron
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as bad as I thought it would be
This book was not as bad as I expected it to be, based on the reviews. Although it seemed to take me a long time to finish it. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Rachel Silverman
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too wordy and self-serving
I've been trying to finish this book thinking that all the kudos it received must be for something. I'm half-way through and still don't care about the characters, who are so... Read more
Published 12 months ago by pixelgal60
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