My least favorite of Claire Messud's books, but still rather good. It does plod along, and it doesn't handle the alternating points-of-focus very well. Some sections were over 100 pages, making it hard to track when and where people were, making me flip back constantly to re-acquaint myself with the other narrative. There were actually a couple of characters I gave up on keeping up with.

The settings are rich, the characters real, the wants and needs of everyone clear and relatable. The sentences are gorgeous, the dialogue captivating. The connective idea between the two stories is masterfully drawn - what the sisters show us and how their stories relate is clear and insightful without ever feeling obvious or overdone.

Ultimately the way I felt about this book was very similar to how I felt about Emporer's Children. The story clipped along at a nice pace, there were some characters very richly rendered, but at the end of it all I felt sort of "eh" about the whole thing. Both were told from multiple viewpoints, this one predominantly through two sisters who are essentially estranged, with the occasional viewpoints of random, lesser characters. One of the sisters I disliked immensely and would poke my eyes out if I had to spend more than 5 minutes with her, but hey, at least she evoked something in me. I came close to giving this 2 stars, but the characters were very distinct, it was a quick read, and there were some beautiful passages.

There's something grasping and terrible about this book, about an elderly woman and her grown daughters who each try to find some clear place in the world after a major let-down or failure, with only the tiniest of triumphs to keep them going. Messud's writing is spare and controlled, even in the face of clear disappointment.

Here's a bit of Melody Simpson, who cajoles her elder daughter into visiting Scotland to see their ancestral home:

"Melody Simpson decided to drop the subject. She couldn't make Virginia understand, and she didn't like to consider that Virginia might be right: that Emmy might be indifferent to her mother's last day. Although were that so, it would only show how similar mother and daughter were. You don't grieve over the inevitable. And Emmy was still her favorite child."

Highly mediocre - no characters to identify with.

Couldn't stand Emmy, one of the main characters. Her choices seemed ridiculous to me. I didn't feel a connection to any character besides perhaps Virginia. Lovely writing in isolated spots, but could not get excited to pick it up and read.

Nu mi s-a mai întâmplat până acum să citesc o carte în care toate personajele să-mi fie antipatice. Nici personajele principale: Emmy, Virginia și mama lor nu mi-au plăcut, nici cele secundare.
Am tot așteptat să se întâmple ceva în cartea asta și la final am rămas cu senzația că autoarea a ratat subiectul, iar eu am pierdut timp ambiționându-mă să o termin.

It's always bad when you read two books in a row where the main character annoys you. This was a pretty indulgent tale of two sisters with different personalities half a world apart who suddenly find themselves with challenges to deal with. I may have missed the point of the book but after I finally finished I couldn't even understand what they'd learned - the damn book just suddenly (and unsatisfyingly) finished - mind you I was quite pleased to be done with it too.

In view of this being Claire Messud's first novel, I would say that it shows a lot of promise... but also a certain level of immaturity. Written in the two voices of Emmy and Virginia, middle-aged sisters with opposite personalities, the book has many good moments, but fails to bring the characters' stories together. Or rather : in the epilogue, the two sisters meet again, but their antipathy is as manifest as ever, and in fact, all the personal growth that we had hoped to see after the adventures that had befallen them in the preceding 250 pages, seems to have come to naught.

Emmy, who married an Australian at the age of 20, is newly divorced and at loose ends. Having always believed that you make your own luck, she is now lost, wandering listlessly around Bali on a tropical vacation. Her efforts to fit in with the backpacking crowd don't pay off, and she ends up, very passively, as a houseguest in the house belonging to fellow Australian Buddy. Drifting along with the flow of the household, she tries to "find herself", but mainly just floats around in a fog. Meanwhile, her prissy sister Virginia, a Bible-study devotee and lower-middle-management administrator in London, has a nervous breakdown of her own, and finally agrees -the road of least resistance - to accompany her mother on a trip to the Isle of Skye.

Both trips, to both islands (Bali and Skye) are both traumatic and cathartic. Or so I think. Both Virginia and Emmy become embroiled in the relationships of others around them (in Virginia's case: her Bible-study friend and said friend's neighbor; in Emmy's case : the tension between Buddy's girlfriends, ex-girlfriends and teenage son Max), but it's not clear how this affects them. As I said, in the epilogue, Virginia and Emmy meet on the occasion of Emmy's daughter's marriage... manage to completely misunderstand and dislike each other, and don't seem to have been altered all that much by what I would consider to have been some pretty shattering experiences.

The best parts of the book were the descriptions of Emmy in Bali. I have never been in Bali, or anywhere near that part of the world, and I can't judge whether these sections have verisimilitude or not. There were enough details to make me believe that Claire Messud knew whereof she wrote (squelching mud seeping through the flip-flops, aggressive monkeys, religious ceremonies), but in any case, I felt transported into that far-away world. For me that was the best part of the book, because I could not make much sense of the characters.

Interesting book. Two middle-aged sisters find themselves on unexpected journeys at opposite ends of the world. While away, they question their faith, their relationship with each other, their future goals & plans, etc. Emmy & Virginia meet some eccentric people along their travels. I enjoyed parts of the novel, yet I thought it could have all tied together a little better.

When the World was Steady was Claire Messud's first novel. I had the opportunity to interview Messud at Writers ' Week during the 2000 Adelaide Festival of the Arts. She was out promoting her second novel, The Last Life. I didn't get a copy until the day before the interview, so I ploughed through a copy of When the World was Steady that I borrowed from the library.

C.S. Lewis made a comment in The Four Loves about how some people mistakenly think that, on the basis of enjoying a book they've read, they would enjoy the company of the author. After reading When the World, I found the prospect of meeting the author daunting. It's a deceptively simple story of two sisters; Emmy, the glamorous traveller, Virginia, the mousy stay-at-home type. Our story begins when each has had their lives etched out for them, through choices made by or for them over decades of adulthood. Emmy, who married an Australian, is now going through a difficult divorce and has tried to escape her life in Bali for a time. Virginia still lives in a flat in London with their mother, despairing for the life she never lived. The two narratives run parallel as each let their circumstances buffet and lead them.

Messud has an economy to her prose propels the narrative, offering details and hints, little asides side-long glances that create an image, a scene, a character, homing in on the important and the interesting while letting the reader fill the rest for themselves, like a Rembrandt self-portrait. This light touch makes the characters and their circumstances all the more engaging.

For the record, Messud was a very charming and gracious subject, both generous with her time and thoughts and very patient with my inexperience at interviewing. I should also mention that The Last Life is also frustratingly good and well worth the read.

I've read two books Claire Messud, and my primary criticism of both is that I really don't like the protagnists of both then -- I may feel compassionate towards each of them, but I don't really like them. This novel is set in both Bali and Scotland. It's easy to read (having read 90% of it while stranded on a flight from Houston back to DC), but I can't say I would have read it had it not been the only book I had readily available on the trip back home.