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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The
Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Longings Claire Messud’s new novel, The
Emperor’s Children, is set in As the seminar drew to a
close, Murray Thwaite felt the tickle in his throat
that was a demand for both a cigarette and a drink. Darkness had fallen
outside the classroom windows and the students, in spite of the rebuke of the
fluorescent light, slouched and slumped, undignified, in their plastic
chairs. They’d lasted pretty well, for students, and had shown animation,
even enthusiasm, for his firsthand account of the late sixties and early
seventies antiwar movement—in fact, they’d seemed at once incredulous and
thrilled to imagine the quad of their own dear institution, right outside
these very windows, teeming with renegades, Murray, long-haired, among
them—but after three hours they were drained, avid for their cafeteria
suppers, the slovenly warmth of their dorm rooms, and the mindless chatter
(what did these kids talk about?) of their peers. Thwaite’s friend and host, Eli Triplett, noting
the clock upon the wall and the drooping lids of his flock—even, perhaps,
hearing the urgency in Thwaite’s
throat-clearing—graciously brought the discussion to a close. “And, my
ducks,” he concluded, in his “What is it again?” asked a
surly boy in overalls, who had fiddled endlessly with his goatee throughout
the class, and had seemed to munch upon his facial hair with his upper teeth,
giving new meaning, Thwaite thought, to the “goat”
in “goatee.” “Costa-Gavras.
Missing. We’re on to our
government’s South American involvements next, Adam. A whole new set of
horrors.” “Our
government, Eli?” Thwaite murmured as the students wrapped themselves in
their swishing outerwear. “You surprise me. Have you sworn an allegiance I’m
unaware of?” Triplett laughed. “They
take it amiss, you know, the Bolshie ones, if I
suggest I’m not implicated. It’s one thing to criticize your own family, as
you well know, and quite another to criticize someone else’s.” “So you’re lying to them,
essentially?” Thwaite, still seated, raised an
admonitory eyebrow. A girl lurking by the
corner of the table tittered audibly. “Roanne.
Murray Thwaite
stood, a full six foot three, and extended a hand to the young woman, who was
as small as a girl, her face shadowed by voluminous black curls. “Thank you
for your question about Roanne giggled again and tucked her hair
behind one ear, revealing a round, smooth face and a wide mouth. “Auden, right? I’m a double major, English and History.” “They overlap more than you
think.” Thwaite turned to Eli, aware out of the
corner of his eye that the girl lingered. She was quite pretty, and she had
remained alert to the last. “Where’s your watering hole, then?” “Just a couple of blocks
down. Not far, not far.” “Professor—I mean, Mr. Thwaite?” Cigarette already in hand,
though unlit (he was by now familiar with the infuriating regulations of
institutional buildings, enforced with the same draconian rigor as those in
airplane bathrooms), Thwaite started for the door,
with a swift glance over his shoulder to encourage Ms. Levine. “I just wondered—I have a
few questions—for the school paper—a profile?” She was at once pushy and
timid in a way that appealed to him. “A budding journalist as
well?” Roanne Levine laughed again. The laughter
might, in time, grate; but Thwaite was, by his own
admission, ever curious. And she was pretty. “Why don’t you join us for a
drink?” Eli cleared his throat. “I don’t know—Professor
Triplett? I don’t want to— Well, just quickly, maybe, if you don’t mind? Or
another time, if that would be better?” Vaguely irritated by
Eli—was this, too, a rule, like the smoking? But he didn’t even teach here;
what could he care?—Thwaite said, “No, now is good.
We have eternity for sleeping.” The bar was Irish, and
old-fashioned, with sticky wooden tables and chairs and a sticky concrete
floor. “More a food than a drink,
my dear girl,” Thwaite observed. “I know, I know, but they
make the best ones here. It’s what I always have. “Quite right, then, that
you should have it now. Be true to yourself, I always say.” There was a slightly
awkward silence. Thwaite could tell that Eli was
struggling not to fill it, that he hoped the discomfort might hurry the girl
on her way. Undeterred, she took a notebook from her backpack and flipped
through it with artificial busyness. “I wrote out some questions,” she said.
“I hope you don’t mind?” The questions, it
transpired, were largely personal, and hence had the effect, perhaps desired,
of making Thwaite look more closely at the girl and
listen less to what she asked, let alone to his answers. He loved to talk—as
he’d told Triplett before coming to the class, he loved to teach— but talking about himself did
not interest him. He noticed that she had a habit of pulling her sweater cuff
down over the wrist of her left hand and clutching at it while she scribbled.
Her legs, in long black boots, were not merely crossed but fully entwined
beneath the table. And she looked up at him from behind the curtain of her
hair like a doe or a rabbit. She seemed younger and more charmingly ignorant
with each question, but earnest, which he found winning. And he could
tell—surely by now he could tell—that she found him attractive, and not just
in an avuncular way. They all had a second round, and were nearing the ticklish
question of a third, when Eli, who had grown increasingly restless, felt the
professional need plumply to intervene. “I bet you’ve got enough
now for a full biography, Roanne,” he said, pushing
back from the table. “I’m just going to settle this tab, and maybe you could
finish, here. Mr. Thwaite doesn’t have all night,
and I’m sure you have other things to do, too.” “Don’t worry about him,”
said Thwaite when Eli had stepped away. “He’s just
looking out for you.” “Well, I did have some more
questions, just a few, but—” “Tell you what,” he
interrupted her. “Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll give you a call
later.” He watched for her reaction, but there was none. “Or tomorrow, and we can finish up then.” She wrote her details in a
spiky hand and pulled the sheet from her pad. “Thank you so much,” she said
breathily. “This has been amazing.” He wouldn’t call her, of
course, and she wouldn’t really mind. But this way, she would feel that a
genuine connection had been made, that she had impressed herself upon him,
which was surely her desire. He stuffed the paper into the pocket of his
coat, already bulging with taxi receipts, matchbooks, and slips such as this
one. Who knew? Maybe he would call, some other time if not tonight. It was
important to leave open the possibility. Roanne Levine, with a wave at her professor,
slipped out into the mucky night—the little bit of snow had melted and the
sidewalks glistened wet—and Thwaite agreed to
follow Eli—and perhaps some others? Eli had his cell phone—to a bistro down
in their neighborhood, on When he got home, well past
one, Annabel had left on only the table lamp in the hail. Unable, briefly, to
remember whether his daughter was in residence or not, and certain that his
wife, whom he had not telephoned, would be annoyed if wakened, Thwaite did his best to tiptoe along the Oriental.
Whether on account of his gait or the gloom or, indeed, the sloshing
quantities of scotch and burgundy he had consumed he could not later have
said, but he simply did not see the mound of vomit until it had surrendered
moistly and noisily beneath his right shoe. “Fuck,” he hissed.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It was, he knew, the cat again: the Pope, their
seventeen-year-old bony Abyssinian, ever haughty and standoffish and now,
frankly, decrepit and repellent. She had been a gift to Each character
longs for something, and nothing is as it appears in The
Emperor’s Children. The pretense and deceptions will bring smiles to the
faces of many readers. By the end, they either get what they want or what
they deserve. Read The
Emperor’s Children and find out which. Steve Hopkins,
October 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Emperor's Children.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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