The Emperor's Children

I recently read a book called The Emperor's Children by Claire Messaud. I read about it in one of the mini-reviews in The Atlantic or The New Yorker, which I still subscribe to, but which are delivered to me a few weeks lake via the intercompany pouch that makes its way from our US headquarters building to China every week or two. There are a few English bookstores in Shanghai but they're pretty small. These magazine reviews and whatever happens to catch my eye in one of the airport bookshops on a layover on a US work trip are my sources for book tips now. Not much coming from my Chinese work colleagues. It was a pretty quick read and a sort of entertaining story, but it didn't do that much for me. Had I been raised among intellectuals in The Dakota perhaps I would have liked it more.