A review by notagreatreader
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie

3.0

Well, this was one of the more serious books I've read in a while. Overall, I enjoyed it - the characters and the plot were certainly gripping, even if the majority of the characters were ambiguous at their best and totally unlikable at their worst. That being said, Vasilisa is probably my favorite character in this book, although she pursues her goals with a single-minded ruthlessness, or perhaps because of it.

And although I kind of wished her to live, I think, that it's fitting that she died in the end as well.

Although I've seen this book described as Rushdie's return to realism, the imagery/metaphor of the presidential candidates as the Joker and Batwoman were at times so evocative or stretched so much that I started taking them at face value and the book dipped into the magical/comic-al world for me. That being said, I think, it works pretty well, for the most part, although at first, I found it a bit jarring next to all the Greek and Indian mythology stuff that features pretty heavily in the book as well. After a while, however, I came to appreciate the mental image the clash of the ancient and modern paints.

My biggest problem with this book is actually how several aspects of its apparent central theme - identity and identity crisis - are explored. Starting this book I didn't know it features the exploration of sexual and gender identities, so when that topic started to become apparent, I was pleasantly surprised, as I didn't expect that in a "mainstream" book such as this. However, quite quickly this exploration became quite a hot mess written by someone who apparently doesn't understand what they're talking about. It's like a boomer did a quick google search and attempted to convey the complex millennial (and other younger generations') philosophy of gender, sexuality and labels, all without really grasping it at all himself. I kinda sense that

Rushdie wanted all of the Goldens, except little boy Vespa, to be tragic in their pursuit of their identities, so to speak. This means that D had to spiral into self-destruction while trying to figure out their gender. D is pretty much thrust into the diverse world of gender and sexuality identities, which should be helpful, except that this world is a half-assed caricature of reality and it pissed me off so much.

This book straight-up misrepresents/misunderstands certain aspects of the millennial identity philosophy (for the lack of a better word), especially the idea of identity as something that a person just is versus identity as something a person chooses. The apparent message of this book is that the two are mutually exclusive, when, in fact, they are two sides of the same coin, if you will - there is the feelings, understanding of self, behavior, appearance of a person and there are words that a person chooses to speak about and represent those things. There are other things that bothered me in D's character arc but they are smaller or more nebulous so it's difficult to put them into words.

Bottom line is, it appears Rushdie wanted to write an epic book about an American identity crisis, delving into all aspects of it (race, political leanings, gender, sexuality, etc), but he just sort of swept the surface and dressed it up in evocative language, ending up with a bit of a mess, the conclusion of which appears to be that

we're all people and trying to identify as something destroys you

? I guess?

All the murders, Vasilisa's scheming, and Rene's selfish insensitive pursuit of his Golden cinematic masterpiece

sure kept me engaged though.