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A review by nadinekc
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
5.0
As usual with a Rushdie novel, It was a slow read because I savored and sighed over every sentence. I also love his storytelling flair and ability to Pied Piper readers through the Rushdie world that mixes reality, myth and folktales, both old (Baba Yaga) and new (Batman). It feels like his own style of magical realism, where we simultaneously inhabit the multiple worlds of New York City, Gotham and Metropolis.
‘Golden’ is the operative word for me with this book - his extreme empathy for his characters casts a golden glow over the story, especially his main characters - Rene, the Nick Carraway style narrator/observer, Petya the high functioning autistic brother (“A mind imprisoned by itself, serving a life sentence”), Apu the playboy artist (“he ran voraciously through the city, embracing it all like a young Whitman”), and gender confused D (“running from the thing he knew he was moving toward”). Even Nero, the aging gangster tycoon gets a Lear-like sympathy. I think Rushdie falters though, when it comes to female characters. They’re all beautiful, extraordinarily talented - and one dimensional. The exception is Vasilisa, although he’s still suckered by a pretty face - the only way he can attribute evil to her is through a Baba Yaga metaphor.
Golden House is stuffed full of references and allusions to everything high low or medium brow, from ancient Greek tragedy to Mr. Bean. In anyone else’s hands this could be pedantic, but for me it’s a pleasure to follow a mind so in love with ideas. This intellectualism, combined with a story set in a small, highly privileged corner of Manhattan, (in his own words, “cocooned in liberal downtown silk”) leaves this novel open to criticisms of elitism - which Rushdie acknowledges - with a quote from Adorno ;)
In addition to all the above, Golden House is, last but hardly least, a full-on assault on Trumpism, especially it’s anti-intellectual posturing. In contrast to the golden glow he casts on his fictional characters, Rushdie can’t even bring himself to make (the unnamed) Trump a human, and depicts him as The Joker run amuck in Batman’s Gotham City. These sections feel like they were written just yesterday - in fact, I had the the tragically uncanny experience of reading a scene that mentioned a Manhattan bike path on the very day that it was hit by a terrorist attack, killing 8 and injuring 11.
‘Golden’ is the operative word for me with this book - his extreme empathy for his characters casts a golden glow over the story, especially his main characters - Rene, the Nick Carraway style narrator/observer, Petya the high functioning autistic brother (“A mind imprisoned by itself, serving a life sentence”), Apu the playboy artist (“he ran voraciously through the city, embracing it all like a young Whitman”), and gender confused D (“running from the thing he knew he was moving toward”). Even Nero, the aging gangster tycoon gets a Lear-like sympathy. I think Rushdie falters though, when it comes to female characters. They’re all beautiful, extraordinarily talented - and one dimensional. The exception is Vasilisa, although he’s still suckered by a pretty face - the only way he can attribute evil to her is through a Baba Yaga metaphor.
Golden House is stuffed full of references and allusions to everything high low or medium brow, from ancient Greek tragedy to Mr. Bean. In anyone else’s hands this could be pedantic, but for me it’s a pleasure to follow a mind so in love with ideas. This intellectualism, combined with a story set in a small, highly privileged corner of Manhattan, (in his own words, “cocooned in liberal downtown silk”) leaves this novel open to criticisms of elitism - which Rushdie acknowledges - with a quote from Adorno ;)
In addition to all the above, Golden House is, last but hardly least, a full-on assault on Trumpism, especially it’s anti-intellectual posturing. In contrast to the golden glow he casts on his fictional characters, Rushdie can’t even bring himself to make (the unnamed) Trump a human, and depicts him as The Joker run amuck in Batman’s Gotham City. These sections feel like they were written just yesterday - in fact, I had the the tragically uncanny experience of reading a scene that mentioned a Manhattan bike path on the very day that it was hit by a terrorist attack, killing 8 and injuring 11.