Claire Messud recognizes what it’s like to live in New York City as a single Ivy League graduate struggling with a career while running in the circles of the literary elite — but this is not her life. She is an Ivy League graduate — she studied at Yale and Cambridge — and no one can deny that she is part of the literary elite.She has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and her second novel, “The Last Life,” was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and Editor’s Choice at the Village Voice. This, however, is where the similarities end.

Ms. Messud is a 39-year-old mother living with her husband and two young children in Somerville, Mass., and as is quite obvious from her accomplishments, her career is anything but struggling. She has lived in Boston, London, and Washington DC, but she has never resided in New York City. She believes, however, that her latest novel, “The Emperor’s Children” (Alfred A. Knopf, 448 pages, $25), could not have taken place anywhere but New York. Ms. Messud visits the city tonight as part of a book signing at 192 Books in Chelsea.

“The characters would not be the same people if they did not live in New York,” she said in a recent interview. “I definitely have to believe that you don’t need to live in New York to succeed, but these characters’ successes are entirely tied up in living there.”

“The Emperor’s Children” tells the story of Marina Thwaite, the daughter of a renowned journalist, and her two best friends from Brown University — Danielle, who is a documentary filmmaker, and Julius, a book and film critic whose career is riding upon his reputation rather than any actual writing. Marina has been writing a book on children’s fashion for the past seven years. Danielle is successful in her career, but her love life is bleak. Julius is beginning to realize that his reputation is only getting him so far and he turns to a doomed relationship in which his partner supports him financially but not emotionally. In the year leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, their lives are forever altered as Danielle begins an affair with Marina’s father Murray; Marina falls in love with an ambitious magazine publisher, and Marina’s small-town cousin Bootie arrives ready to take on the world.

Ms. Messud began writing “The Emperor’s Children” before September 11, abandoning the project 50 pages in. She did not pick up the book again until fall of 2002. It was very hard to write during that time,” she said. “Fiction seemed so frivolous and irrelevant.”

While the September 11 attacks seem to be the climax of the novel, Ms. Messud does not consider them, or the plot in general, to be the central component.

“Characters are always the most important element. The plot really arises out of the characters,” she said. “It’s about trying to observe your people closely, honestly and without imposing your will artificially upon them. If you make a character do something that character wouldn’t do, your book is fake.”

Ms. Messud cannot recall the specific inspiration for “The Emperor’s Children” or why she felt the need to attempt writing it again. “It seemed to have an organic necessity,” she said. “It had an urgency in my mind, that has kept me from worrying, ever since, about where the idea for it came from.”

Tonight, 7 p.m., 192 Books, 192 Tenth Ave.at 21st Street,212-255-4022, free, reservations required.