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thebobsphere's review
3.0
Although Rushdie disowns his first novel, it is not that bad. In fact I see it a sort of potential for what was to follow in later novels. Saying that Grimus does have a lot of flaws.
The story focuses on Flapping Eagle, who drinks an elixir which gives him eternal life, given to him by his sister, who deserts him. After 777 years he wants mortality and to find his sister, eventually ending up on the metaphysical Calf Island. After meeting a bizarre cast of characters, while embarking on his two quests, Flapping Eagle also tries to unveil the mysterious Grimus and discover why Calf island is so strange.
Philosophers, prostitutes, hunchbacks, ghosts, frog gods and tons of people crop up during the novel and they all leave an impact on Flapping Eagle's psyche but drag him into the weirdness of Calf Island and change his destiny. Flapping Eagle himself has to control himself in order to complete his quest.
As such this is a rich plot with some Rushdie trademarks, puns, jokes, references to popular culture and mythology but somehow things just don't gel that well and there quite a few dull stretches which hamper the plot's progress. Also Rushdie's writing is restrained, considering that by his second novel his penmanship improved, Grimus' style comes as a tiny shock.
Definitely not a book for a Rushdie beginner but if you want to see the seeds which later developed in his later novels then Grimus is worth a read but prepare to be underwhelmed.
The story focuses on Flapping Eagle, who drinks an elixir which gives him eternal life, given to him by his sister, who deserts him. After 777 years he wants mortality and to find his sister, eventually ending up on the metaphysical Calf Island. After meeting a bizarre cast of characters, while embarking on his two quests, Flapping Eagle also tries to unveil the mysterious Grimus and discover why Calf island is so strange.
Philosophers, prostitutes, hunchbacks, ghosts, frog gods and tons of people crop up during the novel and they all leave an impact on Flapping Eagle's psyche but drag him into the weirdness of Calf Island and change his destiny. Flapping Eagle himself has to control himself in order to complete his quest.
As such this is a rich plot with some Rushdie trademarks, puns, jokes, references to popular culture and mythology but somehow things just don't gel that well and there quite a few dull stretches which hamper the plot's progress. Also Rushdie's writing is restrained, considering that by his second novel his penmanship improved, Grimus' style comes as a tiny shock.
Definitely not a book for a Rushdie beginner but if you want to see the seeds which later developed in his later novels then Grimus is worth a read but prepare to be underwhelmed.
whimsicalmeerkat's review
1.0
Painfully bad. In many cases, I like people's first works, but not this time.
stanl's review
3.0
I found this to be an artistic pleasure, though not a great story. I was not immediately drawn into this story, and there were intervals in reading times before I finished it. What drew me, however, was a sense of narrative coherence: my experience was of a whole, even though my reading was interrupted and broken into pieces. Although there was an abundance of words, not one seemed wasted, and this seemed a disciplined accomplishment in a work that does not exhibit a streamlined style. I shall look forward to moving on through Mr. Rushdie's oeuvre.
danperlman's review
2.0
Was talking with a friend and Rushdie came up and I realized I'd actually never read anything he'd written. So I started at the beginning. I made it about a third of the way through this one and was just, simply, bored. Not a style of writing I enjoy, nor were the plot or characters interesting. Perhaps a different one of his novels....
hadaad's review
I had a hard time reading this book. I didn't pull very much meaning from it. It was very well-written, but I thought the majority of the characters were unsympathetic. It was not dull, but it didn't do much for me.
vanessar's review
2.0
This is not your usual kind of Salman Rushdie book. There are magic potions, conjurers, big stone frogs, gates onto other worlds and a fair few nutcases. The main character, an American Indian granted immortality and now wanting to get his death back, is kind of boring. The people he meets, especially Virgil, are mildly more interesting, but the book only really gets going around the middle section, when our hero, Flapping Eagle, is in the town and involved with other people. When he's struggling through various parallel dimensions in a bid to get to the all-powerful Grimus and argue his case for mortality, it gets bizarre and arbitrary and I turn off. But then, I'm not a sci-fi fan so it had its work cut out from the start.
kalikabali's review
3.0
I liked the narrative and the underlying assumption of how no culture can exist in isolation forever without self-destructing. That knowledge completes a being and a complete being can only be dead. I liked the attempt to frame it as a myth, and in fact, the literary and style references to various mythical traditions abound in the book. This is definitely not one for the hard-core sci-fi readers, I wouldn't ever classify it as one. My problem with the book is that the author tried too hard. If you have read other books by him before, you do expect a certain, I don't know, neatness in style and this book has too much cleverness thrown in. It was his first book. And he hates it, apparently. I didn't. In fact, I'm quite glad I read it.
lordofthemoon's review
2.0
This was Rushdie's first novel and it's very much a journeyman work. He does use the magical realism vehicle that he uses much better effect in later novels (such as the excellent [b: Midnight's Children|14836|Midnight's Children|Salman Rushdie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1371063511s/14836.jpg|1024288] and [b: The Satanic Verses|12781|The Satanic Verses|Salman Rushdie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1281988101s/12781.jpg|1434467]). It's difficult to identify themes that that he would come back to so it's best to just look at this as it comes.
Flapping Eagle takes the elixir of immortal life, after his sister is first given it and spends the next several hundred years wandering the world, after her disappearance. Eventually he finds his way to Calf Island, which exists somewhere between dimensions and eventually to a confrontation with the eponymous Grimus.
The characters that Flapping Eagle encounters on his journey are mostly just caricatures, without much in the way of depth, although Flapping Eagle's companion and guide Virgil Jones does get more development.
I think that Rushdie may have been going for somewhere between gothic and grand guignol in this novel, and to some degree he's managed it, but at the expense of any warmth or engaging characters. Flapping Eagle is a difficult character to warm to, as his motivations and thoughts mostly go unreported, and his actions are often less than endearing. Rushdie's writing here is workmanlike but he's still developing a craft. It's not yet the polished and poetic style that it would develop into.
So mostly worth reading if you're a fan of Rushdie to see how his writing developed, but it doesn't really stand up to his later work either in plot or in the writing.
Flapping Eagle takes the elixir of immortal life, after his sister is first given it and spends the next several hundred years wandering the world, after her disappearance. Eventually he finds his way to Calf Island, which exists somewhere between dimensions and eventually to a confrontation with the eponymous Grimus.
The characters that Flapping Eagle encounters on his journey are mostly just caricatures, without much in the way of depth, although Flapping Eagle's companion and guide Virgil Jones does get more development.
I think that Rushdie may have been going for somewhere between gothic and grand guignol in this novel, and to some degree he's managed it, but at the expense of any warmth or engaging characters. Flapping Eagle is a difficult character to warm to, as his motivations and thoughts mostly go unreported, and his actions are often less than endearing. Rushdie's writing here is workmanlike but he's still developing a craft. It's not yet the polished and poetic style that it would develop into.
So mostly worth reading if you're a fan of Rushdie to see how his writing developed, but it doesn't really stand up to his later work either in plot or in the writing.