The Emperor's Children

BACKLOG

The Emperor’s Children 

by Claire Messud

I initially wanted to by Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, her latest novel that’s been receiving good raves in literary blogs and magazines. But being currently hot on the market, even hard bound books are hard to obtain. Not that I would immediately get the hard bound book. I can always wait for trade paper backs especially for contemporary fiction. As I tried to research on Claire Messud’s background, I found out that she was first known for her novel The Emperor’s Children. I searched in Fully Booked and found one in Alabang. It was on hardbound. Clearly, I opted to wait for The Woman Upstairs instead. But after a few weeks on my regular trip to our neighboring Booksale, I came upon the hardbound copy of The Emperor’s Children for just 100 pesos. SOLD!

I read The Emperor’s Children on one gloomy day when the monsoon rains were beating the metro and I had to skip work. It thought it was the perfect novel. Contemporary on a gloomy day. A colleague of mine told me that he heard the novel was pretentious and not a good read. Well, I was even more intrigued than ever. I read the book from cover to cover only stopping for lunch or bathroom break. But sadly it was not because of the suspense and the intensity of the story, but it was just one of those days that my mood cooperated and I really wanted to get this done and over with.  My attention span was stable like the weather and I wanted to stick to the novel hoping that some chapter, some events would turn it around for me. In short, my mood and attention were just forgiving this day. 

Sadly, it wasn’t great. I was thinking it would be in the same league as St. Aubyn’s, but it was not. It was just a more sophisticated version of women trying to find themselves in the world, trying to be dramatic, when it’s not. I believe the word here is “pretentious” and that’s exactly what my colleague said. It’s a story about women in their 30’s trying to figure out what life is beyond the glitter and glamour of their world. There’s this popular, rich and beautiful daughter of a renowned novelist and there’s this brilliant and collected best friend who involves herself with a married man. There are of course distinct characters that will serve philosophical exchanges about life, but it’s all too trying hard for me. There were instances that I really don’t understand the purpose of the chapter, but I just had to go through the motions, if I were in any other unforgiving mood, I would’ve slammed the book and started another. I sensed that everything’s either trying hard to be dramatic that it turns out to be flat and superfluous. I believe some parts just prolonged the story and quite unnecessary. It wasn’t a treat in any case. If for anything, it would’ve been short story with the characters intact. 

Thank goodness I only read it the entire day. Finished it in 10 hours without much to say and grabbed the first book of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments to sweep off the lull.

After 2 weeks: I saw The Woman Upstairs in National Bookstore in hardbound. Nah, I’d wait for paper back or probably an e-book copy.