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A review by bibliotequeish
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
3.0
KNIFE is Salman Rushdie’s account of surviving the 2022 stabbing attack and his recovery in the months that followed.
Ok... let's get right into this.
I found parts of the book really hard to connect with. Rushdie is oddly cagey about some key details, like calling the person who may have saved his life "the Thumb" instead of learning (or at least sharing) their name. That struck me as impersonal and dismissive.
"The owner of the thumb kept introducing himself to anyone who would listen. He was a retired fireman, he said. His name was Mark Perez. Or might it have been Matt Perez"
For a memoir so rooted in survival and human connection, moments like that felt emotionally distant.
At times, it didn’t feel like a memoir about survival at all. Rushdie seems to try really hard to be relatable, complaining about house repairs?? Saying that he's taking on speaking gigs to cover expenses, despite being a millionaire many times over, all the while casually name dropping, and complaining about his expensive suits being ruined (Don't worry guys, he got a NEW expensive suit). That disconnect pulled me out of the emotional side of the book.
There are glimpses of something powerful here, moments when Rushdie reflects on the sheer absurdity and horror of the attack, and the love that helped pull him through, but they're buried under ego driven meanderings that left me feeling more detached than moved.
Ok... let's get right into this.
I found parts of the book really hard to connect with. Rushdie is oddly cagey about some key details, like calling the person who may have saved his life "the Thumb" instead of learning (or at least sharing) their name. That struck me as impersonal and dismissive.
"The owner of the thumb kept introducing himself to anyone who would listen. He was a retired fireman, he said. His name was Mark Perez. Or might it have been Matt Perez"
For a memoir so rooted in survival and human connection, moments like that felt emotionally distant.
At times, it didn’t feel like a memoir about survival at all. Rushdie seems to try really hard to be relatable, complaining about house repairs?? Saying that he's taking on speaking gigs to cover expenses, despite being a millionaire many times over, all the while casually name dropping, and complaining about his expensive suits being ruined (Don't worry guys, he got a NEW expensive suit). That disconnect pulled me out of the emotional side of the book.
There are glimpses of something powerful here, moments when Rushdie reflects on the sheer absurdity and horror of the attack, and the love that helped pull him through, but they're buried under ego driven meanderings that left me feeling more detached than moved.