I've been meaning to write a post about the book, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud. I finished it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. In light of recent events, the themes of the book seem even more relevant.
The book focuses on three friends about to turn thirty just as this century is turning.It examines their intertwining lives in Manhatten and the intellectual world that they inhabit. The book culminates with the events of September 11th, but Messud uses a light hand describing the events,focusing individually on the characters and assuming we know what we know about the events of that day. The impact of the world event and the lives of these often self centered twenty-somethings have a great deal in common. It is a loss of innocence, a realization of adulthood and responsibilty that cannot at all be avoided.
Before the country has to face it's own inevitablity,one the characters, Danielle reflects on all of the changes that have recently happened to them so quickly:
"All of them, all three of them: a year ago, they'd been still linked, inexorably and, they'd thought, forever. It was supposedly better this way- each of them had found her heart's desire- but did they laugh as they had done for so many years? Would they ever laugh that way again, or was it over, now, in the Realm of Adult Society?" (345)
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