Upper West Side Vision

This New York novel has won part-Algerian Claire Messud early booking on literary longlists. Deservedly so. It is the finest comedy of manners to have come out of any city for a very long time

For a book already hailed as the new New York novel, The Emperor8217;s Children opens oceans away. Danielle is in Sydney to research a proposed documentary on reparations for indigenous peoples. On her last night, she is taken to dinner at the home of a writer. In a mirror there, she takes stock of the imperfections in her appearance. She hesitates before responding to the conversation around her. 8220;She didn8217;t want to seem8230; unsubtle, unironic, American.8221; Outside of her natural habitat8212;Manhattan8212;she gets faint, and passing, inkling of the frailty of the New York brand of self-assuredness.

In this exquisitely subtle, ironic, American comedy of manners, Claire Messud follows the lives of Danielle, Marina and Julius. Friends since college days at Brown, they are on the brink of turning thirty in a year when two airplanes will crash into the city8217;s skyline, restoring a tragic equilibrium to their lives. For now, for most of the book8217;s March-November 2001 span, however, they try to come to terms with the limited manifestation of what they believed was their great promise and entitlement. They are smart, they know the right people, they cope with the hollowness of their circumstances with wit, they counter anxiety about their limited relevance by enhancing personal myths.

Danielle, preparing proposals of films on revolution, must learn to be satisfied with subjects like liposuctions gone wrong. Marina, beautiful daughter of New York8217;s grand old liberal, has been struggling for years with a book commissioned because she8217;s her father8217;s daughter. The image conquers her and she chooses to remain dependent on her parents instead of taking a job that demands anything less than his talents. Julius, writer of devastating reviews, makes a performance of the indignities inflicted by fast failing literary aspirations. Together they are in denial about their extended adolescence. 8220;We can count cholesterol next year,8221; shrugs Julius.

At the heart of the novel are three men who will shape their immediate futures and shake them up. There8217;s Murray Thwaite, Marina8217;s father, knitting together rage against the system8212;on Vietnam, Palestine, late capitalism, Bosnia. There8217;s Ludovic, Australian wannabe who strives to take New York8217;s celebrity intellectuals by storm by plotting cultural exposes. There8217;s Frederick, Murray8217;s 18-year-old nephew, dropped out of college and its pretensions to apprentice with his uncle on how to pursue a life of the mind.

It is artless Frederick who will see through the personal myths built around these New Yorkers. He will try to cope with the personal blow suffered upon seeing through Murray by revealing how worn are the contents of the latter8217;s big book project. It will, of course, expel him from the Thwaite circle. It will also set up each one of them for dramatic confrontations, the dust from which will settle, mid-November, with the trauma of the 9/11.

It sounds trite to say that 9/11 will shatter the innocence of each of the characters 8212;and move them, in step, to clarified reconciliation with their pretensions. That is why Messud8217;s novel is so stunning. She has an unobtrusive way of mapping the minds of her characters. Murray8217;s is the stuffy studio, the stacks of paper and clippings imitating the architecture of his brain, entry to the room forbidden without express invitation. It is closed to those who accept to play by Murray8217;s rule, yet it is so visibly revealing to Fred upon illicit intrusions. Danielle8217;s is her studio, her bookshelves holding her reading lists since childhood, her CD collection reflecting 8220;not so much an individual spirit as the generic tastes of her times8221;, four Rothko reproductions mirroring hers and her friends8217; compact with cultural cool.

There are very few books published that must be read, no matter what. The Emperor8217;s Children is one.