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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this book to show solidarity with the author after he was banned by Rajiv Gandhi’s government and forced to apologies. Even some group issued fatwah calling for Rushdie's death. The result was several failed assassination attempts on Rushdie. So this was my statement for freedom of expression. I am against banning any book.
The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The book takes a moment to grasp Rushdie's complex storyline and sort through the British and Indian slang, but the effort is worth the time to both expand one's vocabulary and see his logic. His writing is extremely clever and humorous. It is a bit difficult to get started following the completely non-linear narrative.
I did find it rather long and a little disjointed, but maybe that is my shortfall, being far from a literary genius. Overall, I liked it and am glad I found out what it was all about.
The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The book takes a moment to grasp Rushdie's complex storyline and sort through the British and Indian slang, but the effort is worth the time to both expand one's vocabulary and see his logic. His writing is extremely clever and humorous. It is a bit difficult to get started following the completely non-linear narrative.
I did find it rather long and a little disjointed, but maybe that is my shortfall, being far from a literary genius. Overall, I liked it and am glad I found out what it was all about.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Despite the lushness of the language, neither the prose nor the story were compelling enough, and at times were indeed dense enough, as to make me want to keep reading. I can see myself enjoying this book in a literature class but on my own, it was just too difficult.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Quotes:
"A poet's work. To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."
"'Life is so easy for some people,' she had wept. He had kissed her forehead. 'For you, it may always be a struggle,' he said. 'You want it too damn much.'"
"... and worst of all, there was not one new thing about her complaints, this is how it was for women like her, so now she was no longer just one, just herself, just Hind wife of teacher Sufyan; she had sunk into the anonymity, the characterless plurality, of being merely one-of-the-women-like-her. This was history's lesson: nothing for women-like-her to do but suffer, remember, and die."
"Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true."
"He told her: he fell from the sky and lived. She took a deep breath and believed him, because of her father's faith in the myriad and contradictory possibilities of life, and because, too, of what the mountain had taught her. 'Okay,' she said, exhaling. 'I'll buy it. Just don't tell my mother, all right?' The universe was a place of wonders, and only habituation, the anaesthesia of the everyday, dulled our sight. She had read, a couple of days back, that as part of their natural processes of combustion, the stars in the skies crushed carbon into diamonds. The idea of the stars raining diamonds into the void: that sounded like a miracle, too. If that could happen, so could this."
"An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded flight, the earth mutated - nearly - into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted."
"Any new idea is asked two questions. The first is asked when it's weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody--minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? - The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world. . . . And now, Mahound, on your return to Jahilia, time for the second question: How do you behave when you win? When your enemies are at your mercy and your power has become absolute: what then?"
"Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. 'When the day is not warmer than the night,' he reasoned, ' when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything - from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs - as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What a folly! For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her; a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated. City,' he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, 'I am going to tropicalize you.'"
"A poet's work. To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."
"'Life is so easy for some people,' she had wept. He had kissed her forehead. 'For you, it may always be a struggle,' he said. 'You want it too damn much.'"
"... and worst of all, there was not one new thing about her complaints, this is how it was for women like her, so now she was no longer just one, just herself, just Hind wife of teacher Sufyan; she had sunk into the anonymity, the characterless plurality, of being merely one-of-the-women-like-her. This was history's lesson: nothing for women-like-her to do but suffer, remember, and die."
"Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true."
"He told her: he fell from the sky and lived. She took a deep breath and believed him, because of her father's faith in the myriad and contradictory possibilities of life, and because, too, of what the mountain had taught her. 'Okay,' she said, exhaling. 'I'll buy it. Just don't tell my mother, all right?' The universe was a place of wonders, and only habituation, the anaesthesia of the everyday, dulled our sight. She had read, a couple of days back, that as part of their natural processes of combustion, the stars in the skies crushed carbon into diamonds. The idea of the stars raining diamonds into the void: that sounded like a miracle, too. If that could happen, so could this."
"An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded flight, the earth mutated - nearly - into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted."
"Any new idea is asked two questions. The first is asked when it's weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody--minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? - The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world. . . . And now, Mahound, on your return to Jahilia, time for the second question: How do you behave when you win? When your enemies are at your mercy and your power has become absolute: what then?"
"Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. 'When the day is not warmer than the night,' he reasoned, ' when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything - from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs - as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What a folly! For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her; a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated. City,' he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, 'I am going to tropicalize you.'"
I really wanted to like this book, but it was just...annoying to read for me at this time.
I was prepared to love this book, because of its acclaim, historical context, and its important place in my own history. (When it was published, my father was a bookseller. He ultimately decided not to sell it for the safety of his employees, but he said if he only had to worry about himself he would have because he believes art is worth dying for. This revelation is a core memory for me, one that exemplifies what type of person my father is).
Unfortunately, the fact it took me FOUR YEARS to finish makes it clear how much difficulty I had getting through it. Rushdie certainly has a way with words, and I often found his writing entertaining and surprising, but more often than not found him using far more words than is necessary for so little actual plot. I put down this book for months at a time before coming back to it without losing the plot, if that is an indication of how little actually happens. But perhaps it is also a testament to how memorable the characters are. Obviously, I know the literal plot is not the point of this book, but wish this was edited down 100 pages or so.
I guess finishing this book was my pilgrimage… and I did not come out the other side a believer, which leaves me feeling a little empty and a little blasphemous.
Unfortunately, the fact it took me FOUR YEARS to finish makes it clear how much difficulty I had getting through it. Rushdie certainly has a way with words, and I often found his writing entertaining and surprising, but more often than not found him using far more words than is necessary for so little actual plot. I put down this book for months at a time before coming back to it without losing the plot, if that is an indication of how little actually happens. But perhaps it is also a testament to how memorable the characters are. Obviously, I know the literal plot is not the point of this book, but wish this was edited down 100 pages or so.
I guess finishing this book was my pilgrimage… and I did not come out the other side a believer, which leaves me feeling a little empty and a little blasphemous.
Maybe the most difficult and most clever book I've ever read. Updated from 4 stars to 5 stars because I think about this book all the time. Every part of the text and metatext of this book is intricately weaved with every other part and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be disentangled and "solved" or simply admired. Would (&hopefully will) read again.