When the World Was Steady

Format:	Paperback 272 pages

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Synopsis

Emmy Simpson believes she makes her own luck. After an austere wartime childhood in London, she joyfully grasped at her first sign of good fortune and left for Australia. Her sister Virginia doesn't believe in luck at all. She made no more than a brief foray to the other side of the city. The sisters made their choices, made steady worlds for themselves. But now, middle-aged, they find these worlds disintegrating. 'In its rich detail and its humour, this is a wry, uplifting book' Independent on Sunday 'Messud writes beautiful cadenced prose, and proceeds, sentence by sentence, image by image, character by character, to create a fully realized, multi-layered world ...[she] has the imagination, the craft and the understanding of human nature to write about anything she chooses' Chicago Tribune 'This is a fine first novel, and the "first" is deceptive, for its author has the daring and assurance to take on Iris Murdoch-like questions about goodness and truth' New Yorker

Book details

Published
22/02/2002

Publisher
Picador

ISBN
9780330488174

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UK Kirkus review

This debut novel was originally published in 1994 and went on to be a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Messud herself went on to win the Encore Award in 2000 for her second novel The Last Life. Judging by this book, she deserves any accolades that come her way. She is a brilliant writer, insinuating her way into the confidences and histories of her characters - both conscious and unconscious - while managing to remain aloof and at times even tongue-in-cheek. This novel tells the stories of two very different lives. We initially meet Virginia and Emmy, just briefly, in childhood during the war, fast asleep one evening. Their mother bends over their intertwined bodies and longs to know what is in their futures. The rest of the novel is an unwinding of the steps that has led them to live now on opposite sides of the globe. Emmy fled south London at the age of 20 and at 47, finds her marriage has disintegrated. Even her daughter Portia has rejected her past and changed her name to 'Pod'. From her home in Double Bay, Australia, Emmy is sent by a well-meaning friend for a break in Bali, where she winds up climbing a mountain and joining a group of expatriates for a prolonged house party. Meanwhile Virginia lives with her elderly but capricious mother and has settled for an existence in an administrative - 'or rather, executive' - capacity as a deputy director of personnel at the university. She's also fervent in her religious beliefs and has developed an embarrassing crush on her boss, Simon Ramsbottom, a married man who even she admits is 'squat and runcible and slightly foolish'. Their alternative fortunes become a pacesetter for the book. Emmy, askew from the norm and searching for her 'true' self, becomes an unwitting touchstone for the other characters in Bali. Virginia also takes a trip, all the time unaware of what her mother is planning. It almost seems a shame and an anti-climax when the sisters do eventually meet up - but the journey is more than worth it. (Kirkus UK)