Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of The Emperor's Children.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further
reading, and author biography that follow are meant to enliven your
group’s discussion of
The Emperor’s Children, Claire Messud’s
richly plotted, densely populated comedy of manners and ideas. Like
some of its high-profile antecedents, it’s set in New York City: not
the august, whalebone-corseted New York of Edith Wharton’s
The Age of Innocence nor the brainy, feuding city of Saul Bellow’s
Humboldt’s Gift, but
New
York at the turn of the 21st century, when restaurants have taken the
place of museums–and maybe even churches–and every new magazine launch
is billed as the opening salvo of a revolution. It’s a New York where
ideas, along with beauty, have become a form of currency, essential for
anyone who wants to go anywhere but not to be taken too seriously. Much
of the novel’s comedy arises from the misunderstandings between those
characters who understand this and those who don’t: The latter have
their hearts broken.
At the novel’s center are two young women
and a young man, friends since college, who are now entering their
thirties. Marina Thwaite is a beautiful “It” girl who by virtue of her
looks and connections has been given a contract for a book she’s not
sure she can write. Danielle Minkoff is a thoughtful young woman
laboring in the purgatory of television and longing romantically for
something better. Julius Clarke is frivolous, hard-living, and famously
witty, having parlayed said wit into a career as a downtown critic but
not much of a living: to his torment, he has to work temp jobs. All of
these three revolve at varying proximities around Murray Thwaite,
Marina’s father, an aging liberal journalist of lofty reputation and
even higher self-estimation. It’s he who is the Emperor of the novel’s
title. Soon Murray’s gravity draws a fourth satellite, his young nephew
Bootie, an awkward, worshipful boy who aspires to become a genius and
sees Murray as essential to that objective.
It’s Bootie’s
arrival in New York that sets much of the novel’s events in motion. He
gets a job as Murray’s secretary and–after Julius hooks up with a rich,
doting boyfriend–sublets his apartment. He pines for Marina even as she
becomes involved with the man Danielle had set her sights on, the
elegant, serpentine Australian magazine editor Ludovic Seeley. And when
Bootie’s worship of Murray predictably turns sour, he announces his
change of heart with a gesture that destroys the equilibrium the other
characters–mistakenly or not–took for happiness. There are comedies
that leave a book’s characters with whipped cream on their faces and
comedies that leave them deeply, and sometimes painfully, changed, and
The Emperor’s Children is
one of those. Thanks to Claire Messud’s deft grasp of character, her
flawless eye for New York’s social hierarchies, and her deliciously
unscrolling sentences, her book also changes the reader.
Reader's Guide
- At the novel’s onset, most of the characters are outside
New York: Danielle in Australia, pursuing an idea for a story and
finding someone to have a crush on; Marina at her parents’ summer house
in Stockbridge, accompanied by Julius; and Bootie in his mother’s house
in upstate New York. Why might Messud have chosen to begin in this
manner? At what other points in the book do the characters leave the
city and with what results?
- Messud introduces her characters
through their environments: the womblike bathroom where Bootie soaks in
hot water and serious literature; the Thwaites’ resplendent Central
Park West apartment; and Danielle’s pristine, aesthetically
climate-controlled studio. What do these spaces tell us about their
occupants? Why might the author have used this rather old-fashioned way
of ushering us into a novel set in 2001? Where else does she employ the
techniques of an earlier age of literature?
- Which of the
novel’s characters strikes you as its moral center? Is it Bootie, who
comes to New York with such high ideals and easily rankled feelings? Is
it Danielle, who has lived there long enough to feel at home there but
who still sees its pretensions and absurdities? With which of these
characters is the reader meant to identify? Whose judgments seem the
most reliable? And what flaws or blind spots afflict even him or her?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
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