For a book already hailed as the new New York novel, The Emperor’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. “She didn’t want to seem… unsubtle, unironic, American.” Outside of her natural habitat—Manhattan—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 city’s skyline, restoring a tragic equilibrium to their lives. For now, for most of the book’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 York’s grand old liberal, has been struggling for years with a book commissioned because she’s her father’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. “We can count cholesterol next year,” shrugs Julius.

... contd.