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zachlittrell 's review for:
The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
Not a lot of novelists have the balls to start a book with a suicide bomber causing a plane crash, or transform its main characters into angels and devils, or have a whole subplot about Muhammad the prophet, or playfully describe dongs, breasts, or women eating butterflies. No one can say Rushdie lacks in imagination.
It is a masterfully constructed novel that tackles questions of identity on the individual, community, and cosmic scale -- and still doesn't quite fire off on all cylinders. There is a lot to love (Rushdie's penchant for magic realism, comedy, narrative parallels, and irony are all present), but it's weighed down by too much of a muchness. I was never bored, but the connections between the million dazzling subplots and ideas didn't cohere as cleanly as I was hoping either. It is a thick, enriching ambitious world that doesn't quite fill the reader's stomach.
There is also a number of similarities to The Master and Margarita that I refuse to believe are accidental -- and the similarities are good! I just think, unlike Bulgakov, Rushdie got a bit too caught up in his own navel-gazing allegories to really let his freak flag fly as gloriously as the first half of the book promised.
If you love magic realism and/or Rushdie, it's great. But it's a narrative that also requires patience and faith that there's something there worth mulling over--which is incredibly appropriate for a book where the main characters might be incarnations of Gibreel and Shaitan.
It is a masterfully constructed novel that tackles questions of identity on the individual, community, and cosmic scale -- and still doesn't quite fire off on all cylinders. There is a lot to love (Rushdie's penchant for magic realism, comedy, narrative parallels, and irony are all present), but it's weighed down by too much of a muchness. I was never bored, but the connections between the million dazzling subplots and ideas didn't cohere as cleanly as I was hoping either. It is a thick, enriching ambitious world that doesn't quite fill the reader's stomach.
There is also a number of similarities to The Master and Margarita that I refuse to believe are accidental -- and the similarities are good! I just think, unlike Bulgakov, Rushdie got a bit too caught up in his own navel-gazing allegories to really let his freak flag fly as gloriously as the first half of the book promised.
If you love magic realism and/or Rushdie, it's great. But it's a narrative that also requires patience and faith that there's something there worth mulling over--which is incredibly appropriate for a book where the main characters might be incarnations of Gibreel and Shaitan.