The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
by Claire Messud
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Book Summary Information
Author: Claire MessudEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-06-26
ISBN: 030727666X
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Emperor's Children (Vintage)
Book Review: Novel of 2006
Summary: 5 Stars
Handsomely the best book on the 2006 Man Booker longlist, The Emperor's Children is by some distance Messud's most ambitious, accessible and gripping fiction.
This labrynthine yet curiously simple, almost mythical tale centres on a handful of intricately drawn New Yorkers in the weeks running into, and after, 9/11. These people are as alive as those in 'Anna Karenina', and we get the same sense of knowing, and revising, and knowing them again, this time even better. The very characterisation makes the book feel as exciting as a thriller.
At the same time, the emperor himself, a pompous, intelligent, morally complex figure called Murray Thwaite who tells New Yorkers what they should think about the morally complex world around them, is worthy of Philip Roth. But, unlike Roth, this isn't Messud's world, Messud's obsessive thundering vision; rather, it is a myriad of views from each character as they move discreetly around the low-light corridors of Thwaite's Manhattan home, and the gritty, perspiring and anxiety (and caffeine) fuelled streets of New York.
At first reading I thought the ending was slightly overworked, elegant but a little contrived, but on second reading the ending is perhaps the master stroke, distilling the very nature of the novel, an integrated moment of coincidence and self-absorbtion and imaginative energy.
This book is an extraordinarily delicate tapestry. One of the most comprehensively finished and polished novels of the past five years.
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