Just finished the Emperor's Children

[WCGreen]

by Claire Messud...

Dubbed on of the five best novels of the year by the NY Times, I was eager to read the book...

It's a very well constructed book that winds down quickly and so passive as to almost ruin the rest of the book...

[Jim__]

1. I just finished the book.

I found the beginning of the book to be very slow. It took me about 200 pages to get into it. Once I got into it, I thought it was a great book.

However, I didn't find the ending passive. Pretty much the opposite. In the final scene of the book, Bootie, now Ulrich New, leaves his copy of Musil's book on the counter for someone else to find. The book was, "The Man without Qualities", Musil's unfinished novel whose protagonist was Ulrich. The novel was about (just) pre-World War I Vienna, and concerned the 50th anniversary of the emperor Franz Joseph. The title of the 3rd volume of the novel was "Into the Millenium". This book is "sort of" unfinished; and, maybe, a continuation of Musil's book. The ending is, perhaps, a challenge to the reader to finish it - a very active ending.