When the World Was Steady

Chapter by chapter, I found myself enjoying this book immensely, so completely does Claire Messud penetrate the lives of her characters and the settings in which they find themselves. It was only at the end that I began to question the world view that holds the book together; I only wish it were more positive. The book divides its focus between two middle-aged sisters, Londoners, now at opposite sides of the world. Emmy, purposeless after divorce from her rich Australian husband of many years, goes off on a whim to Bali. Her elder sister Virginia has remained in London to look after her aging mother; stuck in a dead-end job and painfully shy, her only social outlet is in church work and Bible study. Halfway through the book, at her mother's insistence, she accompanies her to the Isle of Skye. So two islands, as different as could be. Messud avoids the tourist areas of each; her descriptions of the third-world uplands of the Pacific island (which I don't know) and the rain-swept coast of the Atlantic one (which I do) are simultaneously convincing and surprising. The experiences of the two sisters are different too: Emmy falls in with a colorful group of polyglot expatriates; Virginia and her mother shiver in a tiny boarding house on a gray harbor where everything closes hours before bedtime. Two islands, two women, once close as sisters now widely separated. Two people isolated from the familiar things in their lives. It is almost as though Messud is questioning John Donne's dictum "No man is an island," or challenging EM Forster's motto "Only connect." Throughout the book, and not just in these two characters, there are examples of people reaching out from their isolation in an attempt to connect, to make friends, recover loss. Their pattern of success or failure in this forms the linking theme of the book. But along the way, you will be regaled by an excellent writer stretching her new-found wings (this is Messud's first novel). In some respects, the author amazes me. From reading her later novel THE LAST LIFE, I would have sworn that she was half-French, come to America as some exotic import. But from the evidence of this book, I would have thought her an Londoner born and bred, with an uncanny sense of the lives of small marginal people, their attitudes, prejudices, and way of speaking, all described with a marvelous sense of humor. But then, she also has an obvious familiarity with Australia and the South Pacific; much of this book reminds me of Shirley Hazzard, an older Australian author whom I greatly admire; her masterpiece THE TRANSIT OF VENUS explores many similar themes in reverse. Islands require journeys, and people generally journey to find something, even if only themselves. Yet Messud prefaces the book with a telling quotation from 'Questions of Travel' by Elizabeth Bishop, that ends as follows: "Continent, city, country, society: | the choice is never wide and never free. | And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at

This is a wonderful book and it is amazing that it is a first novel. It has a decidedly unusual structure and subject but is flawlessly pulled off. The scenes from London and Skye recreate a very English (in no other country could this occur) claustrophobic mother/daughter relationship. You get lost in this book and find yourself looking up after 10 pages or so realizing, with a jolt, that the characters aren't real and you are just reading a book. I give it 4.9 because the ending is a tiny bit weak, but don't let that put you off this book -- a fine work and a most enjoyable read.

Claire Messud tackles issues with delicacy and perspicacity. Each of the main characters of this book is suffering from exile- geographical and emotional- and is looking for a home that perhaps never was. She does not elicit our sympathy for Virginia, Emmy or their mother- but you cannot help feeling a deep empathy for these women's loneliness and admiration for their attempts, however fruitless, to overcome it.

This is one of my favorite books. I read it a couple of years ago and I have re-read it many times since. The story Messud weaves, is untouchable in its excellence, both as a great work of literature and as a personal piece about the simplicity of life. A book well worth reading!

I READ THIS BOOK TWO MONTHS AGO, BUT AM STILL THINKING ABOUT ONE SISTER'S ADVENTURE IN BALI, CONTRASTED TO THE STRAIGHT-LACED LIFE OF THE OTHER SISTER IN LONDON. IF YOU READ BOOKS BECAUSE YOU LOVE TO BE TRANSPORTED, YOU'LL LOVE IT. IF YOU HAVE SISTERS WHO LIVE THEIR LIVES DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU DO, IT'S GREAT. IF YOU WANT TO MEET PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIVE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, READ THIS BOOK!