Knopf Doubleday The Emperor's Children 皇帝的孩子

“A masterly comedy of manners... Splendid.” — The New York Times Book Review

 

We've all caught glimpses of them before, but Claire Messud has captured and pinned them under glass, members of a striking subspecies of the modern age: the smart, sophisticated, anxious young people who consider themselves the cultural elite. Trained for greatness at the most prestigious universities, these shiny liberal arts graduates emerge with expensive tastes, a presumption of entitlement, and no real economic prospects whatsoever. If you're one of them or can't resist the delicious pleasure of pitying them, you'll relish every page of The Emperor's Children.

 

The three wunderkinds at the center of Messud's engrossing satire are friends from Brown, strutting through life with élan but also with a sense of floundering that chafes at them like a new pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite—an “It” girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist—and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray’s nephew, Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. 

 

As the skies darken, it is Bootie’s unexpected decisions—and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome—that will change each of their lives forever. Several gifted young people in New York will luxuriate in the masochistic pleasure of reading this novel. Messud's real audience, though, is broader, in the same way that Edith Wharton focused on a particularly rarefied class but spoke to any reader who could relish her piercing cultural commentary. Messud's novel, so arch and elegantly phrased, is a chance to enter a world in which everything glistens with her wit, like waking to an early frost: refreshing, enchanting and deadly.

 

Beneath the rich surface of this comedy of manners runs Messud's attention to "authenticity": its importance, its elusiveness and the myriad tricks of self-delusion we pursue to imagine we possess it in greater degree than our friends and family. A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune—of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promise—The Emperor’s Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment.

 

Features

• Edition : -
• Binding : Paperback
• ISBN : 9780307276667
• Publication Date : 2007/6/26

 

Materials & Care

• Imported