Smash hit

In the colliding private worlds, illusions are ruthlessly unpicked, the clay feet of idols exposed and the knotty problems of authenticity revealed, all with lucidity and rigour.

In its scope, style and substance, The Emperor’s Children is an attempt to return the novel to its golden age; it is engaged in a conversation with George Eliot, Henry James, Dostoevsky. Its psychological realism is perfect, its characters (except for the slightly cartoonish Ludovic Seeley) thrillingly real, alive and utterly convincing in their subtleties of thought and the ticking of their minds.

Messud’s prose is a timely and intensely pleasurable reminder of the possibilities of the English language. To use the word clarity about her style — dense, chaste, luminously intelligent — is to return the word to its origins; this is style as illumination, shining a searching yet sympathetic light on the minds and inner worlds of her characters, and as a radiant mode of moral inquiry.

EXTRACT from THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN by Claire Messud

Somehow, he hadn’t expected to be so fully David’s sidekick. He’d imagined that his name would have some currency, however unfixed; that his persona might provoke a ripple of interest. But he was, instead, a wife, smiled upon and then ignored, unless it was a question of aesthetics or of which downtown bars were hippest or of where to find the best bathing suit. He’d been asked where he got his hair cut, what gym he went to, and whether he had a regular massage — as if primping were his career, as if he were some eighteenth-century Parisian courtesan. So that when, eventually, a very pale, very young stockbroker named Ian finally made, on Sunday morning, the social effort for which Julius had ostensibly been waiting, and drawled, as they stood side by side at the kitchen island dicing onions and peppers for omelets, “So, David tells me you write reviews. That must be fun,” Julius could barely restrain his surging irritation and replied, “I’m a chef, actually; and if you don’t mind, I’ll take over on the chopping front, here.” Ian, mildly baffled, had retreated, apparently unaware of any slight; and in the end, this brunch that Julius had almost single-handedly prepared rendered successful all of itself his entrance on to David’s scene.

But on the way home, Julius, although he knew the importance of this weekend, of his success in it, could not fully mask his pique: he didn’t dare utter anything so naked as a complaint against irritating Ian, or boring Bob, or tedious Thomas, or buffoonish Barry, their plump and voluble host, who was the only other openly gay man on David’s floor at Blake, Zellman and Weaver, and a year or two older than Julius — no, instead he couched his complaints in faint praise, in hidden jibes about the cars and clothes, the quality of the food (his own preparations excepted), and the roughness of the sheets. It was this last comment — ”I thought they were frankly prickly, didn’t you? — that had prompted David to hoot with laughter and slap the steering wheel and pronounce Julius a girl.

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