The Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud, was excruciating painful for me and I never would have finished if it had not been a book club pick. For starters, a central character is a middle-aged male writer who's having an affair with friend of his daughter. What IS the fascination writers have with this character? He appears in roughly 50% of contemporary fiction and, as I've mentioned before, he's not remotely interesting to me. Typically, he's written by a male author and I always assume that the author is just indulging his own fantasy on my time, but this time it's a female author so I can't conjure a reason why this character needed to appear here. The rest of the characters were equally unappealing and uninteresting to me. I guess the novel operates on a metaphorical level exploring the meaning of authenticity, exposing pseudo-intellectualism, and considering the outsider experience. This is worthy territory. It made for a great book club discussion, though others generally disliked the book as much as I did.

It takes place in NYC and climaxes with 9/11, which is obviously not a coincidence. Spoiler alert: Awkwardness results from being at your girlfriend's apartment in Manhattan when you've told your wife you're giving a speech in Pittsburgh on the day terrorists strike causing all flights to be grounded and showing up at home reveals you weren't actually in Pittsburgh.

It was well-reviewed (e.g. NYTimes here) and was nominated for and won several awards, so I'm sure I've just failed to appreciate it to the extent it deserves.