Claire Messud's fabulous new novel, The Emperor's Children, paints a rich portrait of this hothouse environment, from the cocktail parties to the magazine launches, bringing to life a memorable cast of 30-year-olds. All graduates of an Ivy League school, they moved to Manhattan in the 1990s with wild dreams of success, only to run into the glass ceiling of their mediocrity.
Over the course of the novel, each of them gently compromises and grabs a piece of what they feel is entitled to them. Julius, a nasty, career-destroying book critic, nearly abandons his writing when he falls for a young corporate attorney—whom he immediately cheats on. Danielle, a television producer with a luckless romantic life, backs into an ill-advised affair that is bound to wreck friendships.
And then there's Marina, the beautiful daughter of renowned cultural critic Murray Thwaite, who struggles mightily under her father's shadow. Years ago, she used her father's named to get a book contract to write about the social importance of children's clothes. But she has grown bored with the subject and petulantly tries to explain why the project is now beneath her.
"I want to make a difference," she tells Danielle. "By writing. Doing something important. And I don't mean, you know, covering Staten Island PTA meetings for The New York Times. ... Which we both know I couldn't even get even if I wanted to." The English have a word for this kind of complaint: whinging, which perfectly describes what so many characters in this book do in their own heads. Each has been raised to expect that things always get better, making them horribly unprepared for personal setbacks (of which there are many) and large traumas (like 9/11, which comes in toward the end of the book) Rather than glimpse these characters from outside, The Emperor's Children has us get to know them in a close third-person voice, so that each chapter feels almost like an internal monologue. Messud moves from one character to the next with impressive ease, giving her novel the feel of a kaleidoscopic, highbrow soap opera.
It should be irritating to listen to so many seemingly privileged characters log so many self-important complaints, but it's not. In fact, The Emperor's Children feels destined to become the guilty-pleasure read of the fall, the kind of book best consumed in snatched bouts of reading before bed, or in one long weekend while stuffing down something not particularly good for one's arteries.
As much as we don't like to face it, there's a certain inescapable truth to Messud's cast and their sense of entitlement. How much happiness is enough? Do we ever push the plate away? Marina's father is actually writing a book on the topic, but when his nephew, who travels down to New York looking for mentorship, compares his lofty uncle's writing to his behavior in public, such a project seems fraudulent.
Soon enough, the cast of The Emperor's Children have set upon each other in a pretzel of intrigue that would seem implausible were it not so true to life in Manhattan. Until now, Messud has shied away from such tawdriness, telling refined, if sometimes mannered, tales about men and women caught between homes and countries.
The Emperor's Children retains that sense of refinement but is much better plotted and paced than anything she has written to date. Each chapter ends on a mini-cliffhanger. Each scene contains another turn of the screw. We shouldn't enjoy watching these people destroy each other so, but it's hard not to: After all, they deserve each other.