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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
Truth be told I did not actually read the whole thing, I skipped a few chapters here and there - as much as I enjoyed reading the book it did feel like an oblogation at times. Maybe that is due to my weird relationship to 'classics' in general and my own wish to have read them that then cancels out the enjoyment of the actual process... Nevertheless I am so happy to have tackled Midnight's Children!
This was a hard book for me to get through as it seems to be all genres at once. It is, sometimes in the same four-page paragraph, a fictional autobiography, book of poetic reflection, history book, science fiction work, a religious allegory, an epic journey, fantasy novel, National Geographic article, comedic farce and political commentary. The narrative takes up just about a fifth of the book. The rest is a kind of rambling observation of the events that we are never sure are real or should be taken seriously. I admit that without the inclusion of the commentary or the genre fluidity it would not be the same book. I liked it but was equally frustrated with it.
It's a very good tough book. Don't expect an easy ride. Enjoy india partition history from diff prospective
This book solidifies my opinion that Indian authors tell magnificent and fantastic stories.
I'm writing this after my second reading of the book, in October 2020.
I first read Midnight's Children in the summer of 2012 and it made such an impact that I thought of it as my all-time favourite book ever since.
I remember it being about 50 percent magical, super-eloquent storytelling, and 50 percent political history of India and Pakistan. I remember I had to look a lot of things up because I knew almost nothing about the history on independant India and not a lot about Hinduism or Islam, but I was okay with that because I was learning, and the writing was just do damn enjoyable that it didn't feel like hard work. It's obviously a long book, but rather than let that intimidate me or view it as a chore, I just enjoyed pouring over the beautifully written sentences and loving the magical imagery from beginning to end...
It's been on my list to-read-again ever since and I was triggered to pick it back up after reading [b:The Night Circus|9361589|The Night Circus|Erin Morgenstern|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387124618l/9361589._SY75_.jpg|14245059] with a book group. That book reminded me of the magical prose of Midnight's Children but I didn't think it had anywhere near the same depth of content, and recommended Midnight's Children to the group as a better alternative...
So now I've given it 4 stars, but I feel like a simple 1-5 rating of a book like this is so reductive that I felt the need to write this review.
The novel is split into three books which can roughly be summarised from the narrator Saleems' perspective:
- Book 1, leading to Saleem's birth (and India's independence)
- Book 2, Saleem coming of age (and India developing as an independent nation, including unrest and a couple of significant wars)
- Book 3, Saleem going through a kind of rebirth, having his magical powers taken away, and passing his legacy onto the next generation (India goes through a state of emergency at the hands of an allegedly very corrupt prime minister)
To cut a long review short - I liked Book 1 although a couple of the chapters were a bit of a chore; I felt like most of Book 2 was pretty hard going and detracted from my overall enjoyment of the novel; I absolutely loved Book 3 and felt like I was pretty harsh to knock a star off my overall rating because everything about the writing at the end of the book is completely masterful.
Now for the long-winded review...
It started really well - I was enjoying the language, imagery and symbolism of the early chapters as much as I remembered the first time. Rubies and diamonds pouring from nose and eyes. The perforated sheet separating a doctor from his young female patient so he falls in love with her piece by piece.
The introduction of the chutney/pickle analogy is brilliant - "And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings -- by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks."
The narrator teasing us with hints of things to come with Padma playing the role of the frustrated reader; complaining about the painfully slow pace of the narrative - "'At this rate', Padma complains, 'you'll be two hundred years old before you manage to tell about your birth.".
But a good chunk of the first book is pretty hard going and felt like a bit of a chore to get through (e.g. many headed monsters). It felt like a bit of a relief to get to Saleem's birth at the start of Book 2 and I was definitely relating to Padma's frustration but still enjoying how Rushdie has Saleem writing so self consciously - letting us know that he's going at exactly the pace he wants to!
Book 2 started really well and the descriptions of the various children of midnight are very imaginitively written - but they barely feature in the story after they have first been introduced! Even arch rival Shiva only really gets involved in the middle of Book 3 and most of his action seems to take place off the page so the sense of rivalry between him and Saleem doesn't seem as important as I remembered it from my first reading. There's a big focus on politics in Book 2 and I really did find a lot of it very hard work and felt like you really do need to have either directly lived through it or done a PHD thesis on it to appreciate all of the references. The fact that Salman Rushdie studied history at Cambridge perhaps explains a lot. I also started to find the narrative style a bit irritating with the constant comments on the pace and self-consciously unreliable presentation of the facts feeilng quite wearing as the book went on. The end of Book 2 felt like a relief.
But then comes Book 3 and the style completely changes. Saleem is no longer allowed to be self-consiously unreliable because he's suffering with amnesia and is being used as a substitute sniffer dog for the Pakistani army. He can't even remember his own name, let alone his life history, until he ends up in The Sundarbans - a mangrove jungle wilderness at the border of modern-day Bangladesh. This chapter is where I really fell back in love with the book. The magical storytelling is breathtaking and the interweaving of stories/themes/motifs from multiple faiths works perfectly to reflect multifaith India. Saleem spends 40 days in the wilderness avoiding snipers and snakes to come through a kind or re-birth (if you're Hindu) or resurrection (if Christian). He remembers his past (but not his name) and sets off to find his family and friends having become disillusioned with his life in the army.
Book 3 contains so many quotable passages but this one is a great example and for me it's this kind of writing that makes all the hard work of the previous 400 pages pay off:
"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I," every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world."
I love this quote because it reinforces the idea of India as a multi-everything (faith/language/politics/cuisine) place and Book 3 is jam-packed (chutney-packed?) with other such brilliant summaries of the previous 400-600 pages that it all just seems to have been worth it.
One line that made me really smile was this one which describes a not particuarly long story at the climax of a very long-winded novel - "And, to cut a long story short, Picture Singh's challenge was accepted." - I think Rushdie's tongue was firmly in his cheek at the point!
The novel ends with Saleem describing how he ended up making pickles and chutneys for a living. I am a real sucker for a good analogy and the chutnification of history is one of the things I love about this book. Each chapter being described as a jar on the shelf, with at one point five empty jars left to fill, then just one at the end. This is some great chutney material:
"My special blends: I’ve been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit in a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! I, however, have pickled chapters. Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to a jar bearing the legend Special Formula No. 30: “Abracadabra,” I reach the end of my long-winded autobiography; in words and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I’m afraid, with the shadows of imperfection"
I love it!
I did have mixed feelings about the narrative style overall, but I do think it's true that there is not just one version of history and everybody's history is a product of their perspective, environment, upbringing, opportunities etc. So the unreliable and sometimes willfully inaccurate narrator works really well in the end as a way of presenting a period of history and place from one person's point of view. The story would arguably be very different if the knock-kneed Shiva had not been denied his "birth right" and had instead told the Sinai family history - and what would have happened if the Midight's Children's Conference was conducted from the poor side of history instead of the rich? Here's a final quote:
"In the spice bases, I reconcile myself to the inevitable distortions of the pickling process. To pickle is to give immortality, after all… a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art, is to change the flavour in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty jars and a jar) to give it shape and form — that is to say, meaning"
Is this Saleem or Salman talking?
When I was trudging through Book 2 I did wonder if my 2012 appreciation of the novel had been influenced by its huge reputation, but having just lapped up every last spicy drop of Book 3, I now remember why I loved itso much in the first place. I've still dropped a star because the political stuff is tough to get through, but it still sits high on my great-books list and I continue to love it despite its flaws.
I first read Midnight's Children in the summer of 2012 and it made such an impact that I thought of it as my all-time favourite book ever since.
I remember it being about 50 percent magical, super-eloquent storytelling, and 50 percent political history of India and Pakistan. I remember I had to look a lot of things up because I knew almost nothing about the history on independant India and not a lot about Hinduism or Islam, but I was okay with that because I was learning, and the writing was just do damn enjoyable that it didn't feel like hard work. It's obviously a long book, but rather than let that intimidate me or view it as a chore, I just enjoyed pouring over the beautifully written sentences and loving the magical imagery from beginning to end...
It's been on my list to-read-again ever since and I was triggered to pick it back up after reading [b:The Night Circus|9361589|The Night Circus|Erin Morgenstern|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387124618l/9361589._SY75_.jpg|14245059] with a book group. That book reminded me of the magical prose of Midnight's Children but I didn't think it had anywhere near the same depth of content, and recommended Midnight's Children to the group as a better alternative...
So now I've given it 4 stars, but I feel like a simple 1-5 rating of a book like this is so reductive that I felt the need to write this review.
The novel is split into three books which can roughly be summarised from the narrator Saleems' perspective:
- Book 1, leading to Saleem's birth (and India's independence)
- Book 2, Saleem coming of age (and India developing as an independent nation, including unrest and a couple of significant wars)
- Book 3, Saleem going through a kind of rebirth, having his magical powers taken away, and passing his legacy onto the next generation (India goes through a state of emergency at the hands of an allegedly very corrupt prime minister)
To cut a long review short - I liked Book 1 although a couple of the chapters were a bit of a chore; I felt like most of Book 2 was pretty hard going and detracted from my overall enjoyment of the novel; I absolutely loved Book 3 and felt like I was pretty harsh to knock a star off my overall rating because everything about the writing at the end of the book is completely masterful.
Now for the long-winded review...
It started really well - I was enjoying the language, imagery and symbolism of the early chapters as much as I remembered the first time. Rubies and diamonds pouring from nose and eyes. The perforated sheet separating a doctor from his young female patient so he falls in love with her piece by piece.
The introduction of the chutney/pickle analogy is brilliant - "And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings -- by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks."
The narrator teasing us with hints of things to come with Padma playing the role of the frustrated reader; complaining about the painfully slow pace of the narrative - "'At this rate', Padma complains, 'you'll be two hundred years old before you manage to tell about your birth.".
But a good chunk of the first book is pretty hard going and felt like a bit of a chore to get through (e.g. many headed monsters). It felt like a bit of a relief to get to Saleem's birth at the start of Book 2 and I was definitely relating to Padma's frustration but still enjoying how Rushdie has Saleem writing so self consciously - letting us know that he's going at exactly the pace he wants to!
Book 2 started really well and the descriptions of the various children of midnight are very imaginitively written - but they barely feature in the story after they have first been introduced! Even arch rival Shiva only really gets involved in the middle of Book 3 and most of his action seems to take place off the page so the sense of rivalry between him and Saleem doesn't seem as important as I remembered it from my first reading. There's a big focus on politics in Book 2 and I really did find a lot of it very hard work and felt like you really do need to have either directly lived through it or done a PHD thesis on it to appreciate all of the references. The fact that Salman Rushdie studied history at Cambridge perhaps explains a lot. I also started to find the narrative style a bit irritating with the constant comments on the pace and self-consciously unreliable presentation of the facts feeilng quite wearing as the book went on. The end of Book 2 felt like a relief.
But then comes Book 3 and the style completely changes. Saleem is no longer allowed to be self-consiously unreliable because he's suffering with amnesia and is being used as a substitute sniffer dog for the Pakistani army. He can't even remember his own name, let alone his life history, until he ends up in The Sundarbans - a mangrove jungle wilderness at the border of modern-day Bangladesh. This chapter is where I really fell back in love with the book. The magical storytelling is breathtaking and the interweaving of stories/themes/motifs from multiple faiths works perfectly to reflect multifaith India. Saleem spends 40 days in the wilderness avoiding snipers and snakes to come through a kind or re-birth (if you're Hindu) or resurrection (if Christian). He remembers his past (but not his name) and sets off to find his family and friends having become disillusioned with his life in the army.
Book 3 contains so many quotable passages but this one is a great example and for me it's this kind of writing that makes all the hard work of the previous 400 pages pay off:
"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I," every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world."
I love this quote because it reinforces the idea of India as a multi-everything (faith/language/politics/cuisine) place and Book 3 is jam-packed (chutney-packed?) with other such brilliant summaries of the previous 400-600 pages that it all just seems to have been worth it.
One line that made me really smile was this one which describes a not particuarly long story at the climax of a very long-winded novel - "And, to cut a long story short, Picture Singh's challenge was accepted." - I think Rushdie's tongue was firmly in his cheek at the point!
The novel ends with Saleem describing how he ended up making pickles and chutneys for a living. I am a real sucker for a good analogy and the chutnification of history is one of the things I love about this book. Each chapter being described as a jar on the shelf, with at one point five empty jars left to fill, then just one at the end. This is some great chutney material:
"My special blends: I’ve been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit in a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! I, however, have pickled chapters. Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to a jar bearing the legend Special Formula No. 30: “Abracadabra,” I reach the end of my long-winded autobiography; in words and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I’m afraid, with the shadows of imperfection"
I love it!
I did have mixed feelings about the narrative style overall, but I do think it's true that there is not just one version of history and everybody's history is a product of their perspective, environment, upbringing, opportunities etc. So the unreliable and sometimes willfully inaccurate narrator works really well in the end as a way of presenting a period of history and place from one person's point of view. The story would arguably be very different if the knock-kneed Shiva had not been denied his "birth right" and had instead told the Sinai family history - and what would have happened if the Midight's Children's Conference was conducted from the poor side of history instead of the rich? Here's a final quote:
"In the spice bases, I reconcile myself to the inevitable distortions of the pickling process. To pickle is to give immortality, after all… a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art, is to change the flavour in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty jars and a jar) to give it shape and form — that is to say, meaning"
Is this Saleem or Salman talking?
When I was trudging through Book 2 I did wonder if my 2012 appreciation of the novel had been influenced by its huge reputation, but having just lapped up every last spicy drop of Book 3, I now remember why I loved itso much in the first place. I've still dropped a star because the political stuff is tough to get through, but it still sits high on my great-books list and I continue to love it despite its flaws.
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
The dense narrative and length is not the only thing that makes this an epic novel. I was hoping more of the magic and mystery would be part of the story, but I found myself most often relating to the impatience of the narrator's present day lover, Padma, for him to just get on with the story. I really appreciated the historical aspect of the narrative as it is not something I've ever studied or followed.
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes