The Emperor's Children

Book Review

Claire Messud

Claire Messud's novel, The Emperor's Children, follows the lives of three New Yorkers, best friends since they were at Brown together, from March through November in 2001.

Marina Thwaite, a former Vogue “it” girl and daughter of a famous writer and intellectual, is floundering in her adult life. She is supposed to be finishing the book for which she's received a hefty advance, a study of children's clothes and their subsequent impact on society, titled “The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes.”

Danielle is a television producer from Columbus Ohio who is constantly searching for a viable story idea, whether it is aborigines in Australia or liposuctions gone bad. At times she is envious of her more glamorous friend.

Julius is an independent critic, impoverished and searching for the right man with which to share his life and his expensive taste.

The lives of these three friends become complicated when Marina's cousin Bootie arrives in New York . A college dropout, he is hoping to find some direction and purpose in the presence of his uncle, Murray Thwaite, an opinionated intellectual and Marina's father, in whose shadow she perpetually lives.

The novel contains betrayals aplenty, and climaxes when the planes hit the twin towers in September. It is meant to be a study of life in New York at that particular moment in time.

Messud writes well, despite her frequent use of run-on sentences. The TurboBookSnob wanted to like this novel more than she actually did. The characters on the whole were not likeable, perhaps because they are always seeking the approval of others, and there didn't seem to be any redemption in store for them. This is an entertaining read, but is a long shot for the 2006 Booker Prize shortlist.

“He kissed her before he left, a small, chaste, final kiss. His cheek was rough, hers damp, and she had the impression of feeling everything, of her skin being suddenly all sensation, almost unbearable. He said again that he was sorry, and he went. For a time, she stood at the window, her fingertip to the glass, looking down – she did not see him go, as if he'd vanished – but she watched and there was still dust-covered, bewildered people, some crying, drifting up the avenue, lots of them, like refugees from war, she thought, remembering the famous girl fleeing the napalm, crying, her forearms oddly raised at her sides; and on television behind her they were talking about the planes, just imagine the size of them, it was all too big and too much to take in, and she wanted, now, to turn it off, just to turn it all off – and then she kicked off her shoes and with her skirt rucked up, climbed back into her beautiful bed and pulled up the duvet – such soft cotton, so very fine, Murray's special sheets, and they smelled of him – over her head, as she used to do as a child, and she thought she should cry, she thought that perhaps later she might cry; but just as a few minutes before she had felt, so intensely, now she was as if anesthetized, she felt nothing, nothing at all, you could have amputated a limb and it wouldn't have mattered. She had seen the second plane, like a gleaming arrow, and the burst of it, oddly beautiful against the blue, and the smoke, everywhere, and she had seen the people jumping, from afar, specks in the sky, and she knew that's what they were only from the TV, from the great reality check of the screen, and she had seen the buildings crumble to dust; she could smell them even inside, even with the windows sealed, the asbestos-smoke-gasoline fuel, slight airplane, slight bonfire reek of it, she had seen these things, and had been left, forever, because in light of these things she did not matter, you had to make the right choice, you had to stay on the ground – but God, the sky last night had been gorgeous, the colors, the lights, the towers, and after she let go of her terror, the joy of it – you had to stay on the ground and there was no call to feel anything, there was nothing to feel because you weren't worth anything to anyone, you'd had your heart, or was it your guts, or both, taken out, you'd been eviscerated, that was the word, and the Spanish woman singing last night, she had known, she had known all along, and now there was nothing but sorrow and this was how it was going to be, now, always.”