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    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children
    Audiobook1 hour

    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children

    Written by Claire Messud

    Narrated by Valerie Martin and Hope Davis

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Claire Messud joins Valerie Martin to discuss her book, The Emperor's Children. Hope Davis reads an excerpt from the book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSymphony Space
    Release dateJan 1, 2008
    ISBN9781467663717
    Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children

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    Reviews for Thalia Book Club

    3/5

    858 ratings56 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A beautiful book, filled with long, flowing sentences and gorgeous dialogue. I devoured this book, and kept wanting more. However, the ending left a rather bitter taste in my mouth, which is the only downfall of the book. It should have made it to at least the Booker short-list.
    • 4/5
      Viewed from a distance The Emperor's Children could be mistaken for another hackneyed tale of self-absorbed twentysomethings coming of age in the big city. It is in fact a sharp, artful group portrait in which each protagonist, every action and motivation is convincing. Messud's drawing of character is vivid and utterly real; her shifting scenes and perspectives may be cinematic, but her sentences are Proustian and poetic. Subtle, clear-eyed and critical, The Emperor's Children is a brilliant snapshot of a society hovering on the brink of history.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed this as a comedy of manners, but missed an abiding conflict. There were too many characters and ultimately it lacked focus.
    • 1/5
      Adult fiction. Follows 30-somethings and their parents around the NYC area; some people are more interesting than others.
    • 3/5
      This novel is well written however I did find it hard to understand any of the characters. Perhaps because I am not a 30 something New Yorker.
    • 3/5
      When I came across this novel at a library fundraising sale I didn’t know how polarizing it is. People in the publishing world love it (not surprising since both are New York city-centric) and people in the regular world don’t. At least that’s how it looks on the surface. While I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it either. For a book about three young, elite fuck ups and one young, non-elite fuck up, it has its redeeming qualities. If you can get over and around the unwieldy sentence structure. A model of clear writing Messud is not. Ironically she has Marina’s father Murray give her this advice about writing - “Clarity is key.” p 71I also caught too many words and phrases that Brits and possibly Canadians use, but that American’s don’t. “Over the road” instead of across the street, “bobble” instead of pom-pom (the thing on a hat), “Meccano” should be Erector Set or possibly Tinker-toy, we would put our shoes in the closet not the cupboard. Stuff like that is easy to edit out and rankled every time I found one - lazy.There is a lot of character and scene setting that has to be got through. Between that and the congested writing I almost didn’t, but then the stories started getting interesting and I stuck with it. Lo and behold some of them grow up. It’s a slice of life type of book with an open ending only because life is like that and there wasn’t a specific goal to the action. My notes on characters and situations as I read - mild spoilers!Julius = overblown sense of himself and weirdly a pretty strong streak of self-loathing, he is surprised he’s still an unrecognized genius, having no life to make him interesting will try David’s patience, I think. Vigorously destroying the relationship he says he wants so much (and has engineered to occur). The self-loathing turned to self-destruction and the bathroom hook up was too much. D’s reaction was harsh, but J was asking for something dramatic and he got it.Marina = so used to her looks getting her everything she wants that she has developed nothing else in the way of talent/expertise and now her looks are fading things could get dire. The future with Ludo will be trying and difficult as she is coming to realize post-9/11 and the demise of his great ambition. At least she used his angle to finish her stupid book and good for her for going ahead with publication despite daddy’s withering advice.Danielle = nervous ninny with a surprising lack of salesmanship or real belief in her projects that is not good for a documentary film producer. Her fling with M was really icky and desperate, but the 9/11 disaster gave her cover for her meltdown when he went to Annabel on the day of the attacks. What else did she think he’d do?Bootie = muddled thinker mistaking disdain for rugged individualism, has a really odd idea of self-reliance (sponging off Uncle Murray and Aunt Annabel), horrendously selfish and cruel in the end. So childish and inexperienced in his judgement of Murray, who of course isn’t a perfect being; surprise! - he’s human. What an idiot. Doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and is too blind and full of hubris to know he doesn’t.Murray = the Emperor, a man of consequence who either inspires admiration or condemnation depending on your situation. He’s an institution to some extent and not still full of new ideas or thinking, but that pretty much is part of being human. We tend to wind down and get comfortable in our ruts as we age. Almost everyone who knows him changes opinions on him as the book progresses; mostly for the worse. As a character I found him remote and difficult to relate to.
    • 3/5
      This does not deserve four stars. I suspect some intrinsic fissure is to blame for a rasher of characters that I uniformly loathed.
    • 1/5
      I use the term "read" very loosely! I read a few chapters and just had a horrible time getting into this story. Maybe I'll try it another time...
    • 3/5
      Beautifully written, good storytelling, but the main characters were so shallow and/or odious that it was really hard to care what happened to them.
    • 1/5
      “The Emperor’s Children” weaves the stories of Danielle, Marina and Julius, who met at Brown University, came to New York in the early 90’s, expecting to do something important in the “world.” Now in their 30s, they are still struggling to make something of him- or herself. In the spring of 2001, as all near 30, Danielle is struggling as a TV documentary maker, and Julius is cash-strapped freelance critic (with few jobs). Marina, the daughter of celebrated social activist, journalist 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: Ludovic, an ambitious magazine editor 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, who is determined to live the life of a New York intellectual. As we come closer to that day in September of 2001, we find the group falling apart and trying to put themselves back together. Despite having an interesting premise—the execution of this novel really missed the mark for me. The main characters (Marina, Danielle, Julius and Murray) start out self-absorbed, privileged, pretentious, totally out-of-touch and with little empathy for others or even each other—and despite all these characters experience, they end with little understanding, self awareness or growth. I forced myself to finish the novel hoping I would find some redeeming value in these characters and found in the end to be utterly disappointed and unsatisfied. This book was highly recommended to me—what a waste of my time. 1 out 5 stars.
    • 3/5
      I waited a while to let this one sink in before writing a little review. I really, really like the story in this novel. I liked the characters, I thought they were logically introduced, gradually illustrated, nothing felt forced. The way their stories intertwined was genuinely interesting to me.

      Then instead of closing out the stories satisfyingly, Messud used a plot device that effectively stopped every story short. It was surprising, but not in a good way. Just because it wasn't entirely predictable (when it probably should have been) doesn't mean it's a clever plot device. I found myself frustrated by the fact that I would never get a well-written end for any of the plots and subplots. I still give it three out of five, even with that drawback because I couldn't put it down, and I do feel that it has some of the best chapter structure I've seen. Each chapter could be seen as a vignette really. But sadly this was overshadowed by the disappointing ending (or lack therof).
    • 2/5
      9/11 really? can authors still find nothing better to write about?

      So if it wasn't obvious I somehow missed that this book was a September 11 book and was not expecting even if it were for it to turn to crap the moment tragedy struck the privileged New Yorkers the novel followed.

      I think it was supposed to be some half-cocked social commentary about how privilege and entitlement are evil and those of us who did not drop out of college to self-educate are evil and will be the fall of western civilization.

      What this book actually was about until about 80 pages from the end was sex, betrayal, and how what people see may not necessarily reflect the true person.

      The characters for the most part are single faceted and vapid. Marina, a former/current beauty of 30 living off her parents until a man her best friend was interested gives her a job and a sex life. Murray her father a former hippieish journalist who can't find a liberal cause he doesn't like on paper but won't be in the same room as his wife's misguided juvenile delinquent client from her true social work. Danielle, an over-qualified documentary producer, best friends with Marina and secret paramour to Murray. Bootie, Murray's nephew who comes to NY hoping to learn from his uncle only to find the cracks in his facade and attempt to bring them to the public eye. And finally Julian who was hipster before it was cool to be a hipster until he meets a yuppie man and abandons all his hipster irony for being a trophy wife.

      Now as great as any of the story lines were about 80 pages from the end September 11 happens and anything occurring before automatically stopped as if someone pressed stop on the remote control and they all seem to get their lives together in a split second and it all becomes droll and boring because they are all moral upstanding citizens in the wake of tragedy. And really there isn't anything else to say because the story just stops. No one remains friends everyone for better or worse goes the separate ways as if the last 10 years hadn't happened and let's face it breaks are never that clean. It just left you feeling cheated at the end. And you were because you just wasted 4ish hours of your life on this piece of literary excrement.

      My advice don't waste the time it takes to read this literary disaster and instead read. . .. um well anything really. because in the words of sweet brown "ain't nobody got time for that".
    • 3/5
      I feel this book was somewhat overrated. The writing was interesting, at first, and the characters were familiar, likable. Something changed halfway through, and I can't quite put my finger on it...the characters turned irritating and predictable. The drama rang false and shallow....
      Not a complete waste of time. But certainly not a book to knock your socks off.
    • 2/5
      I don't know if I can muster up the energy to write how I felt about this book. I read some of the other reviews and they all said how I feel and in a much better way.

      I didn't feel like I was smart enough to be reading this book. I didn't get references to authors, books, and paintings. I kept a dictionary near me to look up the words I didn't know and then wondered why the author felt the need to use big, SAT words. It took me forever but I did finish it. I can't say I'm a better person for it though.
    • 4/5
      I've found the one character that I have despised because of his stupidity/naiveness, whatever you want to call it: Bootie Tubb. I think he was the worst character out of all of them! I think Jill put it right when she mentioned this book was like reading about the 7 deadly sins. These people just seem so caught up in their own lives, and claimed to be friends and care about each other, but that was hardly the truth. I had a hard time getting through the first half of the book, but loved the second half. If you love to hate characters, you need to read this book.
    • 4/5
      This book is as much about identity and family-how social stature,geography/locations, and economics shape a person as it is about the "Y" generation talking amongst ourselves in various states of dissaray and ennui...wanting to be ambitious but feeling like a failure no matter what and as if it is probably just a lost cause. It's about relationships-both friendships and intimate and the terrible things that can happen.

      Mainly, the book takes place in NYC but there's also a sense of isolation and separation that becomes apparent between Watertown, NY (far removed) from NYC which also affects the relationships of family members. It's an interesting juxtaposition and you can tell it affects the character's way of dealing with different situations and coping with certain truths.

      I thought this was a good read but it didn't really change my life in any particular way or give me insight into any particular subject or group of people so if you're looking for that kind of novel, keep searching. However, Messud is a skilled writer and it is an engaging read and look at a set of somewhat mismatched characters that evolve a little bit in terms of both their own identities and how we as the reader perceive them.
    • 1/5
      A book about a bunch of self-absorbed, privileged people in New York just couldn't hold my attention. I wanted to like it so much because it had gotten so much buzz and good reviews. I supposed it's just not my type of book.
    • 1/5
      I seem to be in a bit of a rut..books that I can't seem to get into. This was much more than that though. I just could not have cared less about these characters, nothing redeemed them.The book follows 3 main characters around NYC for three months before 9/11 and another month after. Good premise, but...Danielle is a documentary film maker loving her independence from her Indiana mom, Julius is a Vietnamese gay man from Michigan bent on living the good life and making waves in NYC without actually working, and Marina is the spoiled pampered daughter of a famous journalist known for his cutting edge truth, caught in his shadow and only sort of trying the shed it.Sounds like a good beginning, but...Danielle gets involved with Marina's dad (YUCK!) Yes, it' her best friend and he has been her father figure! Julius finally falls in love with the Down Jones workaholic Dave and ignores the other two - then decides that a 1 man relationship is too 1950s for him. Marina has been working on a stupid book about Children's fashion for 10 years and when she falls for Seely, a slimy, Australian who hates everybody and everything, but mostly Marina's father - she finally finishes it to her father and friends horror.The title of this book comes from Marina's book. "The Emperor's Children have no Clothes" The book is supposed to trace human history through the way we dress our children.The only character that seemed to have some potential was Bootie, Marina's 1st cousin. He comes to NYC to be near the famous Murray Thwaite (Marina's father) because he believes that Murray is an honest and thought provoking man after Emerson's ideal. What he finds is that behind the facade there is only an ordinary man. So, Bootie writes an article to uncover the facade. Even this could have been redeeming - but Bootie's reaction to 9/11 took away any redeeming qualities lurking in his story. Anyway - There isn't a character you like or root for - not really.Instead I just kept reading to see what miserable lives these pretty people have. They are so busy making sure that they have no illusions, no pretend, sentimental beliefs that they are really nothing but a flat surface - reflecting what they think others want to see.It did make the book mildly interesting to have been in NYC this past summer. I had seen many of the areas they talked about.But - I would NOT recommend this book. That makes me very sad!
    • 4/5
      Engaging story of a group of individuals linked in various ways to New York City and going through a variety of personal challenges and crises, many of which are borne out of affluence. Downside: I didnt really like any of the characters. Upside: the author does a great job of blending all of the various threads into a seamless whole that continues to move forward. And there are a couple of plot twists that truly surprised.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book--it was very well reviewed. I thought it was kind of stupid, actually, although I kind of enjoyed reading it. That makes no sense, sorry!
    • 1/5
      David ("Dai") Dando is a young Southern Welshman, working in the office of a building society. After an evening in the pub, he takes Fred Peregrine home with him, an old age pensioner who has missed the last bus home and, looking a bit forlorn and out of it, reminds Dai of his Dad. But in the morning, Fred has disappeared. He turns up drowned and David is feeling guilty: should he have done more?This is the start of Dai's story of his next week, told partly as a flow of consciousness, partly as a conversation with someone whose identity we never find out. Interesting, touching, but sometimes irritating as well. Dai's thoughts are written in slang, and that is often hard to read ("yewer one of the Silures Dai don yew ever forget it e use to say"). And I always get irritated with characters that just drift along without having a clue what or where they are going and without the need to get a clue either. And I hate the end
    • 4/5
      The best thing about "The Emperor's Children" is that its author, Claire Messud, refuses to take the easy way out. It's a modern-day comedy of manners that admits that it's more difficult than ever to tie the signifiers of class and breeding to the wealth and background they're supposed to represent. There's no hackneyed commentary about "red" and "blue" America, and Messud resists the temptation to mention brand names at every opportunity, a too-easy method of characterization that many substandard fiction writers can't seem to keep away from. Her wealthier characters obviously expect a certain level of comfort from their lives, but Messud, wisely, focuses on their attitudes, not on where they shop. She also takes to heart the dictum that the rich believe that talking about money is tacky; the pressures of wealth are gently alluded to, but they're seldom discussed in the bluntest terms available. Messud takes the time to consider how the issues surrounding class and privilege affect the existences of her characters, humanizing and personalizing what can often be a drearily abstract discussion. Similarly, "The Emperor's Children" describes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 while barely making reference to the oceans of news coverage and political commentary that followed these events. When they arrive in the novel's final third, they are merely events that disrupt her characters' lives, not just events of world-historical import. All of this means that "The Emperor's Children" feels like a startling truthful, startlingly human portrayal of what it means to be wealthy, semi-famous, and saddled with the weight of heightened expectations in New York in the first years of the new millennium. I can only wish that other writers would tackle issues of education and financial status with half the deftness that Messud displays here. Messud's writing is often as sharp as her powers of observation. Her voice is light and knowing without being crassly comical or becoming too cute for its own good, and she crafts every character in "The Emperor's Children" with real care and attention to detail. She's not afraid, for example, to spend a paragraph or two describing the particularities of a certain character's facial expression, or a page or two tracing the path of another character's thought process. Messud's got a lovely sentence, too, long, winding and graceful, that complements her novel's well-informed, slightly amused, tone. As befits any comedy of manners, Messud's characters' true selves are buried under numerous levels of artifice and pretense, and while doesn't exactly shy away from their duplicity, she's also surprisingly gentle with them. In its final pages, when its least informed character spins out of the novel's social orbit, "The Emperor's Children" makes the argument that a certain hypocrisy, or a gradual lowering of one's expectations, is essential to the process of growing up, growing wiser, and getting on in the world. Call this a universal truth limned from a set of delicately arranged, highly specific circumstances.
    • 5/5
      Knowing and sophisticated, this is a very satisfying work in which New York is a major character. This is how ambitious, successful, and financially comfortable people live and play. A young man receives the education he can't find on a campus, we're introduced to a celebrity author, and ideas percolate merrily with dry humor. Superb.
    • 3/5
      I've read other books by this author and was kinda disappointed in this one. At times it was engaging, but mostly it was kinda too..languagy. Like the author was too in her head. The way to people spoke to eachother kinda sounded like early 1900's england instead of 2001. I really don't think anything was really going on in the end. Eh. 
    • 3/5
      If you like character studies (like Three Junes) then you may enjoy this. The author details the lives of three former Brown classmates as they near 30 in NYC. One is a beautiful, unaccomplished daughter of a well-know intellectual. One is an underemployed, man-about-town gay guy looking for love in all the wrong places. And the third is a striving, TV producer woman who ends up having a doomed affair. The plot is secondary. Really, the focus is on their ideas about each other, the opposite sex, their hopes, and their own demons. It's been called a comedy of manners. Well, kind of. But give me Jane Austen over this any day. I guess, ultimately, that I just didn't like these people. I did enjoy some minor characters (the drop-out nephew, the intellectual father, the creepy fiance). But where is this book going? Have to say I did not like the ending (touted as being great). What a cop-out.
    • 3/5
      Marina, Danielle, and Julius were classmates at Brown University and are all now approaching 30, and making their way in New York City. Marina is the daughter of Murray Thwaite, a famous journalist. She has been working on her first book for many years, and has never held a "real job." She lives with her parents, having recently moved back home after ending a long-term relationship. Julius is a gay freelance writer who lives lives in a squalid apartment and finds work through a temp agency while waiting for his next writing assignments. Danielle produces television programs, and is the only one with a steady income. The Emperor's Children follows these three over the course of a year. While they rarely cross paths in their day-to-day lives, the bonds of friendship are strong and they do call on each other for help and support. Another key figure in this story is Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, Murray's nephew, who has dropped out of university, and came to New York hoping to find himself and make a living. Murray provides Bootie a place to live, and takes him on as his secretary. Danielle is instrumental in finding Marina a job with a magazine startup, and Marina offers both Julius and Bootie the chance to write an article for the inaugural issue. Julius meets romantic interest David through one of his temp jobs, and begins to move in very different social circles. All of the young people look up to Murray as a role model of the successful and wealthy writer. Meanwhile, Murray is dealing with a bit of a mid-life crisis, and struggles to control everyone around him. Messud draws an intriguing portrait of a certain social class. The characters in this novel are are shallow, superficial, and materialistic. It was difficult to care much about any of them, but I still found myself oddly drawn to their stories -- like watching an impending train wreck. But this book takes place in 2001 (and remember, in New York City). So of course September 11 was like the elephant in the room the entire time I was reading this book. On several instances, characters discussed events planned for September, which I just knew wouldn't turn out as planned. I was curious how Messud would address this pivotal event in the novel. After finishing the book I was left wondering if setting the novel in 2001 was just an afterthought, a convenient way to tie up the plot. The year is casually thrown into the text about 50 pages in. September 11 occurs 60 pages from the end of the book, and while it understandably changes the characters' lives, it was an all-too-easy way to catalyze certain events and bring the novel to a close. While this was a light read and somewhat pleasurable, it wasn't quite my thing.
    • 5/5
      Nearly finished this one. It is a great portrait of a group of friends who are making it or not making it in New York. I am enjoying Messud's style of writing and the descriptions of each character and their thoughts is very captivating. It is not an action story as it does move slowly. Definitely worth the effort though.
    • 2/5
      This novel's flat narrative voice and disdain with which it treats its characters hurt my overall rating of the book. The theme, class privilege, is brought into a contemporary setting, the seminal year 2001, but lacked any semblance of heart.
    • 3/5
      This was a good read, yet one ends this book feeling that so much more could have been done with the characters and storyline. The long sentences sometimes work, yet often they are just inconsistent. There are flashes of psychological insight, but the male characters are one-dimensional and poorly developed. The vocabulary sometimes feels forced, as when teenagers start using difficult words they just discovered (the sudden use of the word 'egregious' on successive pages is, well, egregious. The book had me totally absorbed up until the second half, when the flaws become more and more apparent. A good editor could have done so much more here.
    • 5/5
      Set in New York in 2001, this novel chronicles the yearnings and failings of three friends, Danielle (perhaps our main protaganist), her best friend Marina, and their gay friend, Julius. Along the way, Claire Messud instructs us very skillfully about love and loss, about idealism and disillusion, honesty and hypocrisy.An innocent would-be disciple moves to New York and secures a position with his hero. He finds himself disillusioned in due course (where a more worldly apprentice might not), and writes a hatchet-piece in all starry-eyed honesty. Predictably, the hero banishes the youth from his employ, who moves to a Brooklyn hovel and is perhaps lost when the twin towers are hit on September 11. Whither truth? Whither idealism?Ms. Messud is particularly strong when reflecting the thought processes of her characters. Emotional forces running through friends and family ring true; I was never confused over motivation, nor by emotional cause and effect. The prose is graceful and fluid, touched perfectly by idiom. This is a writer who knows her milieu and puts you square in the middle of it. She's very effective.Character, plot, style, and theme meld ineffably here. Most definitely worth your while.