In this highly acclaimed novel by the author of The Emperor’s Children, life isn’t all Emmy and Virginia Simpson might have hoped. When Emmy’s marriage to an Australian man ends, she flees her home in Sydney for the tropical paradise of Bali to “find herself”—only to become embroiled with an eclectic crew of international misfits and smugglers. Her sister Virginia, meanwhile, has never wandered far outside of London. Prim and pious, Virginia is struggling to find meaning in her life and her aging mother thinks a visit to the Isle of Skye is just what she needs. On these two islands halfway around the world, the middle-aged sisters confront their lives and their destinies with unexpected consequences.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In a debut novel of remarkable breadth and intimate insight, Claire Messud tells the story of two middle-aged sisters and the divergent life paths chosen by each. On Bali and Skye, two islands as far apart as geography allows, the sisters reassess their place in the world and gingerly find the new bearings that will allow them to renegotiate the circumstances of their lives with newfound acceptance and flexibility. Nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
From Publishers Weekly
Two estranged sisters, their worlds turned upside-down, pursue separate quests for identity on exotic islands before being reunited in Messud's wonderfully observant debut novel. Emmy Simpson left London in 1960 at age 20 to marry a dashing Australian publisher. Twenty-seven years later, divorced (dumped by her husband for her friend) and at odds with her rebellious daughter Portia, a sculptor, she exits Sydney for the Indonesian isle of Bali. There, her credo that we create our destiny is sorely tested as she falls in with a group of exiles, misfits, long-haired idealists and eager young women dominated by a sleazy transplanted Australian antiques smuggler. Meanwhile, Emmy's prim, evangelical sister Virginia, who lives in London and cares for their invalid, eccentric, death-obsessed mother, is ordered to take a leave of absence by her married boss?on whom she has a mad crush. Her faith wavering, Virginia joins her mother on a trip to the isle of Skye in the Hebrides, accompanied by Nikhil Gupta, an Indian student, searching for his runaway sister, who eloped with a Scot. Shuttling among Sydney, London, Bali and Skye, the American-born Messud, who lives in London, weaves a beautiful, bittersweet story about the painful cost of self-knowledge and the unpredictability of life.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
4.9 stars,
By
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This review is from: When the World Was Steady (Paperback)
This is a wonderful book and it is amazing that it is a first novel. It has a decidedly unusual structure and subject but is flawlessly pulled off. The scenes from London and Skye recreate a very English (in no other country could this occur) claustrophobic mother/daughter relationship. You get lost in this book and find yourself looking up after 10 pages or so realizing, with a jolt, that the characters aren't real and you are just reading a book. I give it 4.9 because the ending is a tiny bit weak, but don't let that put you off this book -- a fine work and a most enjoyable read.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Islands,
By
This review is from: When the World Was Steady (Vintage) (Paperback)
Chapter by chapter, I found myself enjoying this book immensely, so completely does Claire Messud penetrate the lives of her characters and the settings in which they find themselves. It was only at the end that I began to question the world view that holds the book together; I only wish it were more positive.
The book divides its focus between two middle-aged sisters, Londoners, now at opposite sides of the world. Emmy, purposeless after divorce from her rich Australian husband of many years, goes off on a whim to Bali. Her elder sister Virginia has remained in London to look after her aging mother; stuck in a dead-end job and painfully shy, her only social outlet is in church work and Bible study. Halfway through the book, at her mother's insistence, she accompanies her to the Isle of Skye. So two islands, as different as could be. Messud avoids the tourist areas of each; her descriptions of the third-world uplands of the Pacific island (which I don't know) and the rain-swept coast of the Atlantic one (which I do) are simultaneously convincing and surprising. The experiences of the two sisters are different too: Emmy falls in with a colorful group of polyglot expatriates; Virginia and her mother shiver in a tiny boarding house on a gray harbor where everything closes hours before bedtime. Two islands, two women, once close as sisters now widely separated. Two people isolated from the familiar things in their lives. It is almost as though Messud is questioning John Donne's dictum "No man is an island," or challenging EM Forster's motto "Only connect." Throughout the book, and not just in these two characters, there are examples of people reaching out from their isolation in an attempt to connect, to make friends, recover loss. Their pattern of success or failure in this forms the linking theme of the book. But along the way, you will be regaled by an excellent writer stretching her new-found wings (this is Messud's first novel). In some respects, the author amazes me. From reading her later novel THE LAST LIFE, I would have sworn that she was half-French, come to America as some exotic import. But from the evidence of this book, I would have thought her an Londoner born and bred, with an uncanny sense of the lives of small marginal people, their attitudes, prejudices, and way of speaking, all described with a marvelous sense of humor. But then, she also has an obvious familiarity with Australia and the South Pacific; much of this book reminds me of Shirley Hazzard, an older Australian author whom I greatly admire; her masterpiece THE TRANSIT OF VENUS explores many similar themes in reverse. Islands require journeys, and people generally journey to find something, even if only themselves. Yet Messud prefaces the book with a telling quotation from 'Questions of Travel' by Elizabeth Bishop, that ends as follows: "Continent, city, country, society: | the choice is never wide and never free. | And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home, | wherever that may be?"
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some people adrift in middle age,
By
This review is from: When the World Was Steady (Vintage) (Paperback)
This is a book that charts the path of two sisters, both adrift in middle age, as they seek to reassess their future. As young people in their 20s, the two sisters (Virginia and Emmy) make very different choices. Emmy marries and moves to Sydney, while Virginia stays near home. It is their identity that most contrast. Virginia is both dutiful and Christian, while Emmy is largely self-absorbed. It is not just that she leaves her family. She even loses her marriage. The book begins with Emmy seeking to find herself in Bali.
What interested me most about this book was the way that each sister seemed to be searching for the life that the other one had chosen, although their actions were unknown to each other. When Emmy goes to Bali, she does so out of a sense that the spirituality of the island holds an answer for her. When Virginia has a crisis, she realizes that she is more alone than she had thought. This book's settings are so distinct from each other. For the longest time, they exist without any reference. I really enjoyed Virginia's story more, if only because she was wrestling with questions that appear more relevant. The mother lends a lot of excitement for a while. In fact, for a section, she carries the book. This would be an excellent book for a book club. It has a lot to offer for a discussion about commitment, as well as about faith.
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