A review by stephen_coulon
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

It's Salman Rushdie’s second latest novel in which he recasts the story of Don Quixote in contemporary USA. The story follows a retired pharmaceutical salesman as he quests across America with  his imaginary son in a mission to win the love of a daytime talk show host. Here, the quixotic protagonist’s mind is addled by television rather than chivalric poetry, and it’s fun to see Rushdie apply his signature satire entirely to American culture for a change. His swirling magical style is impressively on display here, but the book glances just shy of greatness in his oeuvre. For one thing, so much of the satire runs on television culture, and while Rushdie seems well enough versed in the boobtube milieu it doesn’t come across as entirely genuine. It’s like he knows the lyrics but cannot sing the tunes. I can’t imagine Rushdie spending hours each day in front of the set – the allusions seem more likely to have been compiled by an assistant on his behalf. It’s a detraction. Likewise his attempt to grapple with the opioid crisis in the book. After reading Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Rushdie’s less than serious satire comes across as tritely thinned. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to love in Quichotte, not only in Rushdie’s artistry at the paragraph level, but additionally in a layered metafictional element he pulls of quite expertly in this narrative.