The Emperor’s Children: Claire Messud

This is another suggestion from Jenny; or as we have come to know her here, consistently-excellent-recommendation-Jenny.  You will get to know her in person in a couple of weeks.  She’s going to be taking care of business and sharing the benefit of her awesomeness and wisdom while I’m stuffing myself with pizza in Italy.

I had some reservations about this book.  First, New York and I don’t click.  I like higgledy-piggedly, untidy things.  I like being able to see roofs.  I don’t like towers, shiny metal, or grid systems.  I love Boston.  I like London.  I don’t like New York.  Just one of those things.

Also, I don’t like to read books where the protagonists are shallow, selfish people who I would despise in real life.  Even if I don’t necessarily like the main characters, I have to at least empathise with them.

And you will probably never find a bunch of more superficial, artificial group than the lead figures in ‘The Emperor’s Children’.  Marina, Julius and Danielle are the thirty year old children: all getting by on the strength of their charm and self-belief.  Marina in particular is deeply annoying, with her sense of entitlement, and desperate desire to be important.

The Emperor is Murray, Marina’s father.  He is a journalist who has built his reputation on his honesty, but who has a very distant relationship with the truth.  He’s a liberal championing every unfashionable cause going who won’t lift a finger to help people on his doorstep in trouble.   They all look down on everyone else, and despise what they see as ordinariness, irrelevance, dullness.  All so blind, it’s delicious.

Into this group come Bootie, Murray’s nephew, who idolises Murray but who is frankly obnoxious; and Ludovic, who sees through their pretence, but whose cynicism makes him the worst of all.

In sum: eugh.  Why would anyone care about what they get up to?

Because this is 600 pages of irony, and there’s nothing we like more here at teadevotee than irony.  (Apart from tea, obviously.  And cake and cheese.)  Stylish, clever irony, not full-of-itself annoying irony.  Jenny’s always right.

I chomped my way through this and really enjoyed it.  The film is currently being made; starring Michelle Williams (excellent) and Keira Knightley (loathsome).