Claire Messud's masterful
1999 novel The Last Life, a faux-memoir by the privileged 14-year-old daughter of a
French-Algerian father and an American mother, dealt with the false insularity
of the sweet life, and the problems of wresting an identity from a family with
its own powerful legacy. Those same themes re-emerge powerfully in Messud's
elegant social comedy The Emperor's Children, which enters the
rarified world of New York's literary and cultural elite, and finds the younger
generation floundering and complacent, unable to stake a claim to its own
territory. As the title suggests, none of the characters are wearing a stitch
of clothing–not the emperor Murray Thwaite, a revered liberal journalist who
fails to live up to his principles, and not his daughter Marina and her college
friends, whose contributions to the culture are hovering around nil. Though
they each suffer harsh appraisal at times, it's a tribute to Messud's
empathetic gifts that they come off as fully formed, deeply flawed human beings
rather than mere caricatures.
Set over a nine-month
period in 2001–the seven preceding 9/11 and the two-month reckoning afterward–The
Emperor's Children
follows several characters whose entanglements have heartbreaking consequences.
The center of her social circle, Marina has moved back home, ostensibly to
finish a book on children's fashion in which she's long since lost interest.
Her compatriots from Brown are no more settled: Danielle, her closest and most
level-headed friend, is a frustrated TV-segment producer, while Julius, a gay
freelance critic, secretly works temp jobs to the pay the rent and can't keep a
steady relationship. Two rebellious newcomers become catalysts for devastating
change: Ludovic, a handsome slickster from Australia, launches an irreverent
literary magazine and seduces Marina in the process; meanwhile, "Bootie,"
Marina's idealistic cousin, moves into the house and becomes Murray's gracious
assistant, which leads to disillusioning discoveries.
The characters in The
Emperor's Children
each seem to represent one "-ism" or another–youthful idealism (Bootie), old-guard
liberalism (Murray), negating postmodernism (Ludovic)–but Messud adds enough
flesh to those bones to give them life. While she could be accused of wielding
9/11 like a wrecking ball upon their already-crumbling world, the event brings
instant perspective to lives that needed to be shaken from their moral torpor.
Their bubble needed puncturing, and Messud astutely measures the consequences.