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A review by mayelaam
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
4.0
I got an ARC from NetGalley and Random House a couple of months ago, for which I am very grateful, but I hadn't gotten around to being in the right mood to tackle a Salman Rushdie novel.
At about 400 pages, I would call The Golden House a sweeping tragedy, spanning the entirety of the Obama presidency as well as covering flashbacks from decades before. At the heart of the novel, which is possibly the most post-truth-y work of fiction currently on the market, is the self-styled Golden family. The patriarch, Nero, and his three sons, Petya, Apu, and D have recreated themselves upon their move to America. They arrive in 2008 in the great New York City, which allows them the anonymity that comes with big cities. Our guide into their mysterious lives is their new neighbor, a young man who we may call Rene.
"The family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontents."
Through Rene's eyes we discover the secrets that made this family run away from the city which they never name and the secrets that they continue to harbor and nurture even while in New York. But much like in real life, secrets have a way of finding their way to the surface. In this case, with tragic consequences.
The events, mostly, are self-brought by the patriarch, which makes for a much more compelling story and tragedy than if they were spurious. Trying to guess and discover the various mysteries kept me turning the pages.
At the center of the novel's themes is that of identity. What is identity? Is it narrowly defined? Do we need to define it? Is there just one identity? Can we make our own identity and if so, what is real? What is truth? These are all pertinent questions for our day and age, drawn very much from the current political climate. In a world of fake news, what is reality? As Rushdie writes: "The question is, can I lie better than the truth?"
Despite what other reviewers have said, I don't think Rushdie has an answer or is trying to push his particular opinion on us. His point is that identity is massive, and maybe we can't never know it completely. He writes as Rene's voice: "We are icebergs. I don't mean that we are cold, only that we are mostly under the surface, and the part of us that is hidden can sink the Titanic."
Some have complained about the heavy political slant of this book, but in this reviewer's humble opinion, fiction is supposed to be informed, inspired by reality. That is what makes fiction so compelling; that we can recognize ourselves, our world, our lives in the words of a fictional story.
Despite the devastating events in the book, one gets the sense that Rushdie is seeking to right wrongs, to create a story where the "bad" guys do get what they deserve in the end, even if relatively innocent bystanders are dragged into the mud too because this is a tragedy. "Look out, you will reap what you sow. You will reap what you sow."
Of course, this is a book of flawed people, the only characters worth reading about, and what was terrifying in reading about such imperfect, morally gray, people was what Rene expressed as a realization that "there was no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were the monsters we had always feared."
There's also some slight hope, both in the ending which I will not spoil, and in the writing. Things don't necessarily have to be the way they've always been, Rushdie seems to say. "It was the way of the world, I thought, and maybe it was, but the world is a bad place, you should look for a better world than the one we have made."
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The prose is beautiful, as you'd expect from an author as acclaimed as Salman Rushdie, the scope of the story is massive yet handled deftly, the plot and characters are compelling, and the story leaves you thinking long after you've finished reading.
I took a star off for pacing, the book could have perhaps been about 30 pages shorter which would have increased the sense of impending doom you get while reading the first part. It took a while setting the stage, introducing the characters, and that made the first part not as readable as the other two, but it was not that big of a problem.
There are many cultural references, both to pop culture and the classics, many of which might require extra research. I would have appreciated some footnotes for that so I didn't have to go into Google to look up a reference I felt I needed to fully grasp a paragraph, which took me out of the book for a moment and made for a less cohesive reading experience.
The juxtaposition of the political, and to a degree the social, unraveling of America with the downward spiral of the Golden family was beautifully done.
Thanks again to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC given to me in exchange for my honest review.
At about 400 pages, I would call The Golden House a sweeping tragedy, spanning the entirety of the Obama presidency as well as covering flashbacks from decades before. At the heart of the novel, which is possibly the most post-truth-y work of fiction currently on the market, is the self-styled Golden family. The patriarch, Nero, and his three sons, Petya, Apu, and D have recreated themselves upon their move to America. They arrive in 2008 in the great New York City, which allows them the anonymity that comes with big cities. Our guide into their mysterious lives is their new neighbor, a young man who we may call Rene.
"The family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontents."
Through Rene's eyes we discover the secrets that made this family run away from the city which they never name and the secrets that they continue to harbor and nurture even while in New York. But much like in real life, secrets have a way of finding their way to the surface. In this case, with tragic consequences.
The events, mostly, are self-brought by the patriarch, which makes for a much more compelling story and tragedy than if they were spurious. Trying to guess and discover the various mysteries kept me turning the pages.
At the center of the novel's themes is that of identity. What is identity? Is it narrowly defined? Do we need to define it? Is there just one identity? Can we make our own identity and if so, what is real? What is truth? These are all pertinent questions for our day and age, drawn very much from the current political climate. In a world of fake news, what is reality? As Rushdie writes: "The question is, can I lie better than the truth?"
Despite what other reviewers have said, I don't think Rushdie has an answer or is trying to push his particular opinion on us. His point is that identity is massive, and maybe we can't never know it completely. He writes as Rene's voice: "We are icebergs. I don't mean that we are cold, only that we are mostly under the surface, and the part of us that is hidden can sink the Titanic."
Some have complained about the heavy political slant of this book, but in this reviewer's humble opinion, fiction is supposed to be informed, inspired by reality. That is what makes fiction so compelling; that we can recognize ourselves, our world, our lives in the words of a fictional story.
Despite the devastating events in the book, one gets the sense that Rushdie is seeking to right wrongs, to create a story where the "bad" guys do get what they deserve in the end, even if relatively innocent bystanders are dragged into the mud too because this is a tragedy. "Look out, you will reap what you sow. You will reap what you sow."
Of course, this is a book of flawed people, the only characters worth reading about, and what was terrifying in reading about such imperfect, morally gray, people was what Rene expressed as a realization that "there was no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were the monsters we had always feared."
There's also some slight hope, both in the ending which I will not spoil, and in the writing. Things don't necessarily have to be the way they've always been, Rushdie seems to say. "It was the way of the world, I thought, and maybe it was, but the world is a bad place, you should look for a better world than the one we have made."
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The prose is beautiful, as you'd expect from an author as acclaimed as Salman Rushdie, the scope of the story is massive yet handled deftly, the plot and characters are compelling, and the story leaves you thinking long after you've finished reading.
I took a star off for pacing, the book could have perhaps been about 30 pages shorter which would have increased the sense of impending doom you get while reading the first part. It took a while setting the stage, introducing the characters, and that made the first part not as readable as the other two, but it was not that big of a problem.
There are many cultural references, both to pop culture and the classics, many of which might require extra research. I would have appreciated some footnotes for that so I didn't have to go into Google to look up a reference I felt I needed to fully grasp a paragraph, which took me out of the book for a moment and made for a less cohesive reading experience.
The juxtaposition of the political, and to a degree the social, unraveling of America with the downward spiral of the Golden family was beautifully done.
Thanks again to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC given to me in exchange for my honest review.