“The Emperor’s Children”

Claire Messud’s novel, “The Emperor’s Children,” follows the life of three New York 30-somethings as they struggle to become writers. Marina lives at home and in the shadow of her famous journalist father. Julius is easily distracted by chance sexual encounters and ravaged by a poverty that he chooses to ignore. Danielle is wracked with guilt because of her affair with Marina’s father.\nThe book is organized so each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character. Murray, Marina’s father and Marina’s idealistic cousin Bootie often narrate as well. Each chapter is cohesive and well-written, but the book’s message is jumbled.\nWhen Bootie drops out of college to become self-educated, he leaves a worrying widowed mother for his uncle Murray. The renowned writer takes Bootie on as his secretary and protege. Bootie betrays his uncle’s trust when he writes a blazing expose on Murray’s unpublished manuscript – a piece intended to be the culmination of Murray’s life’s work. This subplot becomes the turning point and main focus of the novel, but I could barely understand its significance.\nThe most prominent theme of the novel is the necessity of truth. Marina fails to grasp that she is not a talented writer. Julius finds that his numerous secretive trysts led to a pain he had never imagined. Danielle slowly comes to realize Murray will never leave his wife for her. All of these examples were easy to recognize, but the novel leaves me with many unanswered questions, such as: What’s the point?\nMessud did a fair enough job with the prose. The angsty, overly passionate voice in some earlier passages reminded me of Harlequin romances. However, her writing seems to mature with each new chapter. She brings the events of Sept. 11 into the end of the novel with an ease and class that does not overdramatize and overemphasize the tragedy. In other words, she doesn’t change the flow of the story but rather ties Sept. 11 in smoothly with her plotline.\nShe struggles to be thoughtful, but at the same time I can see that she was going for a watered-down Ayn Rand rip-off. I was also confused by the story’s seemingly unrelated random characters and events. I would not recommend this book because its underlying message lays too far below the surface of the plot to identify.