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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
The Golden House is about a man, Nero Golden, and his three sons – Petya, Apu, and D. Men who just leave their home and lives in an unnamed city in a far away, unnamed country. Nero and his motherless sons sprout up in the New York of the rich on a historic day – on the day of Obama’s inauguration. Nero reigns over everything in his life including his children. Perhaps that is his way of taking care of his troubled children. Forty something Petya, his oldest, is afraid of open spaces, autistic but a genius nevertheless. Apu (again in his forties) is the most normal one, an artist who has the clearest insight into his father’s life. D, eighteen years younger than his half brothers and not comfortable with his existence as defined by conventional terms. Oh, and Nero golden marries again. The new Mrs Golden, a Russian gymnast, is our fifth golden in the story.
The story of the Goldens is about their past, present and their troubles. It also is about what went down in the past, which gave birth to a seventy something Nero Golden. The story is narrated by Rene, the Goldens’ neighbour and an aspiring film maker. And in the Goldens, Rene finds his muse. He observes them, becomes their confidant and in a way their victim as well. Will the past catch up with them, will there be repercussions... these are questions that form in the reader’s mind as they slowly read through. And what a pleasure it was to read.
For the full review, visit Frost At Midnite.
The story of the Goldens is about their past, present and their troubles. It also is about what went down in the past, which gave birth to a seventy something Nero Golden. The story is narrated by Rene, the Goldens’ neighbour and an aspiring film maker. And in the Goldens, Rene finds his muse. He observes them, becomes their confidant and in a way their victim as well. Will the past catch up with them, will there be repercussions... these are questions that form in the reader’s mind as they slowly read through. And what a pleasure it was to read.
For the full review, visit Frost At Midnite.
What a story, what a plot. It engaged me from the first page and I was taking notes by page 6. The writing is fantastic. Salman Rushdie is the ultimate wordsmith. Though this is only my second Novel by the author, I shall now try to read more of his work. Also I don't hand out 5 stars every day. But this one deserves all the respect. A word to potential readers would request you to be patient with the plot and not give up after just the first 30 pages.
This took me months to read. If you can get past the circular, artistic, and difficult prose that the book is written with, you are rewarded with a bit of plot around halfway through the book.
None of the characters are particularly likeable, which, while not a requirement of a good book, makes this one even more of a slog to get through. It's written in a very artistic prose that might be enjoyable in a much shorter form, had I not been constantly trying to wrestle a storyline from it. This book is good if you like to take it slow and savor the words, but if you are like me--alway eager to find out what happens next--I would not reccomend it.
None of the characters are particularly likeable, which, while not a requirement of a good book, makes this one even more of a slog to get through. It's written in a very artistic prose that might be enjoyable in a much shorter form, had I not been constantly trying to wrestle a storyline from it. This book is good if you like to take it slow and savor the words, but if you are like me--alway eager to find out what happens next--I would not reccomend it.
Eerily prophetic, but full of the best of Rushdie's writing. Read my full review here.
For whatever reason, short stories are looked down upon in today's literary world. Nevermind that some of history's greatest authors - from Chekov to Zweig to Hemingway - made their names largely as writers of short stories. And while accomplished novelists occasionally still put out a short story collection, they don't make a habit of it because shorter stories are sneered at by a literary community that believes an author who writes them does so only because he or she can't write a novel.
It's that sort of nonsense that gives us books like "The Golden House" - a novel that might have made a fine 70-page story but is instead a pretentious, almost unreadable 370-page one. I certainly didn't care about the family at the center of the story because it's clear Rushdie doesn't care about them. They're merely characters filling pages to make a novel so Rushdie can espouse on what he really wants to write about - the current cultural and political climate in the U.S.
It's not hard to envision Rushdie looking on with horrified amusement as we all were at the ascension to the throne of U.S. politics of a man as vulgar and certifiably insane as Donald Trump.
"How can I make a story out of this?" He must have wondered. "How can I create a novel out of what would fill an essay or short story?"
So out comes this absurd, bloated tale about a man who comes to America with his three sons in the hope of leaving his past behind.
Full disclosure: I read about 70 pages of this before skimming the remaining 300. I would have stopped after the 70 and just left it, but I knew Rushdie was onto something with his portrayal of Trump - never mentioned by name - as "the joker" in the comic book universe that is modern-day America. Rushdie's pen has never bled venom as sweet as it does when focused on the chaos of the 2016 election. If only it wasn't for all the pretentious drivel that those few sections are buried under ...
The Nick Carraway-esque narrator is a wannabe hotshot Hollywood director, so the classic film references fly fast and furious. But not only those. This twenty-something narrator, who never feels like a fully developed character so much as a blabbermouth encyclopedia that won't shut up, references anything and everything, sometimes multiple times in a single paragraph.
When it's not a film reference it's literature or music. Bach is mentioned in the same breath as the Russian mythological old-witch-who-lives-in-the-forest Baba Yaga, as Rembrandt's "Night Watch", as the peculiarities of Somali pronunciation, as the name of an arrow in Sanskrit, as Borsalino hats - which, Rushdie informs us, are very popular among Orthodox Jews.
Does it matter that these references are almost never related to the story Rushdie is half-heartedly telling? Of course not, because this isn't René Unterlinden - the 20-something-year-old narrator - talking, it's Rushdie, making sure we all know how much he knows.
It's typical of Rushdie to projectile vomit all this pointless knowledge, needlessly complicating the text. There is no reader alive able to grasp all these references without turning to Google. That's what makes Rushdie's books so characteristically dense. Rushdie would never dream of simplifying things by, say, leaving out the information about the Somali pronunciation because, gasp, he wouldn't want Trump voters reading his books.
Rushdie belongs to the class of writer who believes that the more unintelligible a book is, the better. God forbid it's read on the beach or is less than 300 pages! Now, occasionally Rushdie has shown that he's capable of such a good tale that I don't mind.
The magical realism in which he writes many of his stories, like "The Enchantress of Florence", often carries me away. His bombastic, somewhat stylized writing fits well in that genre. The problem with such writing being set in the real world is that there's nothing real about it.
Don't come knocking at the "The Golden House" - there's no one home.
It's that sort of nonsense that gives us books like "The Golden House" - a novel that might have made a fine 70-page story but is instead a pretentious, almost unreadable 370-page one. I certainly didn't care about the family at the center of the story because it's clear Rushdie doesn't care about them. They're merely characters filling pages to make a novel so Rushdie can espouse on what he really wants to write about - the current cultural and political climate in the U.S.
It's not hard to envision Rushdie looking on with horrified amusement as we all were at the ascension to the throne of U.S. politics of a man as vulgar and certifiably insane as Donald Trump.
"How can I make a story out of this?" He must have wondered. "How can I create a novel out of what would fill an essay or short story?"
So out comes this absurd, bloated tale about a man who comes to America with his three sons in the hope of leaving his past behind.
Full disclosure: I read about 70 pages of this before skimming the remaining 300. I would have stopped after the 70 and just left it, but I knew Rushdie was onto something with his portrayal of Trump - never mentioned by name - as "the joker" in the comic book universe that is modern-day America. Rushdie's pen has never bled venom as sweet as it does when focused on the chaos of the 2016 election. If only it wasn't for all the pretentious drivel that those few sections are buried under ...
The Nick Carraway-esque narrator is a wannabe hotshot Hollywood director, so the classic film references fly fast and furious. But not only those. This twenty-something narrator, who never feels like a fully developed character so much as a blabbermouth encyclopedia that won't shut up, references anything and everything, sometimes multiple times in a single paragraph.
When it's not a film reference it's literature or music. Bach is mentioned in the same breath as the Russian mythological old-witch-who-lives-in-the-forest Baba Yaga, as Rembrandt's "Night Watch", as the peculiarities of Somali pronunciation, as the name of an arrow in Sanskrit, as Borsalino hats - which, Rushdie informs us, are very popular among Orthodox Jews.
Does it matter that these references are almost never related to the story Rushdie is half-heartedly telling? Of course not, because this isn't René Unterlinden - the 20-something-year-old narrator - talking, it's Rushdie, making sure we all know how much he knows.
It's typical of Rushdie to projectile vomit all this pointless knowledge, needlessly complicating the text. There is no reader alive able to grasp all these references without turning to Google. That's what makes Rushdie's books so characteristically dense. Rushdie would never dream of simplifying things by, say, leaving out the information about the Somali pronunciation because, gasp, he wouldn't want Trump voters reading his books.
Rushdie belongs to the class of writer who believes that the more unintelligible a book is, the better. God forbid it's read on the beach or is less than 300 pages! Now, occasionally Rushdie has shown that he's capable of such a good tale that I don't mind.
The magical realism in which he writes many of his stories, like "The Enchantress of Florence", often carries me away. His bombastic, somewhat stylized writing fits well in that genre. The problem with such writing being set in the real world is that there's nothing real about it.
Don't come knocking at the "The Golden House" - there's no one home.
Rushdie’s “The Golden House” was a fascinating read. It tells a story of identity crisis and family, with plenty of twists and turns along the way. But most importantly, going forward, it sets the tone for post-truth narratives set in a time of insanity and turbulence.
The novel mixes new realism and postmodernist narration to set a new tone for itself, what the author calls ‘operatic realism’. Rushdie, defining it in an interview, noted that the style relates “my subject, the conflict of the Self, and the Other.” It is crystal clear how the world is set and developed, beginning with the optimistic Obama era followed by the sectarian, identarian crisis of the Trump era. Rushdie portrays an America that has forgotten its ideals and is ravaged by bigotry, racial supremacism, and ignorance. His characters, set against this backdrop, try to reconcile their truths and their views as an American.
It is also where the metafictional aspect of the narrative comes into play. The post-truth nature of the story makes it difficult to distinguish between truths and lies, fact and fiction. The unreliable narrator, Rene, confesses to not knowing things and outright makes events up, some with drama so amped up, it is hard to believe. The narrator also feigns surprise at twists and turns and adds commentary for added dramatic effect. It makes for great reading, but one can’t help but wonder how much of the story being told has ‘actually’ happened, if that makes any sense.
The narrator does it with an incredible duality of sincerity and detachment, too, resulting in a feeling of conscious naivety. The narrator inserts himself into the story at times yet remaining hidden in times of distress. The narrator often acts when it benefits him and is apathetic when it doesn’t. When things are clear to the reader, it’s not obvious to the narrator and vice versa. The same can be said for the way Rushdie deals with identity - it’s a mystery and an obsession in the story, ranging from the political to the personal.
It’s always a pleasure to read Rushdie’s prose. However, it often gets pedantic and pretentious, thanks to the constant film references and metaphors. Where one reference will do, Rushdie provides five. Where one metaphor is fine, he gives ten. I get the fact that the narrator is pretentious and a pedant, yet I can’t quite shrug off the feeling that Rushdie is also indulging.
The Golden House was a fun read. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, it’s that much more potent to see where America was and will be in the future. It was a pleasure to meet the Goldens in a time where insanity is the norm and deception is truth.
The novel mixes new realism and postmodernist narration to set a new tone for itself, what the author calls ‘operatic realism’. Rushdie, defining it in an interview, noted that the style relates “my subject, the conflict of the Self, and the Other.” It is crystal clear how the world is set and developed, beginning with the optimistic Obama era followed by the sectarian, identarian crisis of the Trump era. Rushdie portrays an America that has forgotten its ideals and is ravaged by bigotry, racial supremacism, and ignorance. His characters, set against this backdrop, try to reconcile their truths and their views as an American.
It is also where the metafictional aspect of the narrative comes into play. The post-truth nature of the story makes it difficult to distinguish between truths and lies, fact and fiction. The unreliable narrator, Rene, confesses to not knowing things and outright makes events up, some with drama so amped up, it is hard to believe. The narrator also feigns surprise at twists and turns and adds commentary for added dramatic effect. It makes for great reading, but one can’t help but wonder how much of the story being told has ‘actually’ happened, if that makes any sense.
The narrator does it with an incredible duality of sincerity and detachment, too, resulting in a feeling of conscious naivety. The narrator inserts himself into the story at times yet remaining hidden in times of distress. The narrator often acts when it benefits him and is apathetic when it doesn’t. When things are clear to the reader, it’s not obvious to the narrator and vice versa. The same can be said for the way Rushdie deals with identity - it’s a mystery and an obsession in the story, ranging from the political to the personal.
It’s always a pleasure to read Rushdie’s prose. However, it often gets pedantic and pretentious, thanks to the constant film references and metaphors. Where one reference will do, Rushdie provides five. Where one metaphor is fine, he gives ten. I get the fact that the narrator is pretentious and a pedant, yet I can’t quite shrug off the feeling that Rushdie is also indulging.
The Golden House was a fun read. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, it’s that much more potent to see where America was and will be in the future. It was a pleasure to meet the Goldens in a time where insanity is the norm and deception is truth.
3.5/5 stars
This was something. And probably nothing at the same time.
Huh.
This was something. And probably nothing at the same time.
Huh.
Somehow didn't have the splendor of language that I adored in previous Rushdie novels but might be bc the characters are so terribly, disgustingly similar to a certain Politican and his cronies.
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes