The Emperor's Children (Vintage). Claire Messud. Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House. New York, New York. 2006.

Book review by Jane
This book was a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year. Reading it was kind of like watching a movie that received an Oscar--expectations are rather high. I wasn’t let down by the book--I could see where it deserved to get noticed. The author is definitely talented and the writing is clean and at the same time interesting and colorful. Where I may have had some problems relating is to the characters in the story—all of them. Most of them seemed to have no real problems and yet managed to create them for themselves as they went along. I suppose this is true to some extent in real life, but I would like to think that people make decisions based on the information they have at hand and go on with their lives. For example, one character is the best friend of the girl who is writing a book, and she just ends up having an affair with her friend's father--just a grotesque and dumb move, especially since she has everything going for her—great career, single and supposedly loving it after breaking off with a man. That’s just an example of what one character does—there are many, many more dumb, grotesque moves by the characters. I suppose it makes for juicy reading—I do admit, I wanted to know how they were going to get out of the situation. They didn’t seem to get what they deserved, most of the time, but maybe some of the time they did. But on the way, they go to South Beach, etc. They are, after all, a privileged group of young adults and their families.

I wouldn’t say you would be disappointed reading this book, unless you like people to get what they deserve in life, and people to mostly be operating with some amount of intelligence in making decisions about their own lives. Certainly, the book is somewhat entertaining.

Jane.