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A review by hildalev
THE GOLDEN HOUSE by Salman Rushdie, Salman Rushdie
2.0
This book has a very interesting structure, it resembles a play, possibly a Greek tragedy. This way we can experience the story how it presents itself to the narrator, who first sees the Goldens arrive, and slowly gets more and more acquainted with them. Unfortunately this structure, which is very interesting from the intellectual point of view, prevented me from getting to know the character on my own, but forced me to fully rely the narrator (aka author), who told me right from the beginning, who is who. This introduction resembled an extended list of characters, to long for my taste. The characters themselves, though not entirely unbelievable, can be best described as symbols rather than people. The most alive people in the story were for me the narrator’s parents, who only come up now and then. I am wondering if the author thought about his own parents when he wrote this characters, because they seem to be the only ones he has a real warm connection to.
I won’t talk long about all the references to the very end of the end of the book (When we finally discovered…) og the intertextual references, which were really interesting when done with context, but for the most part were an irritating list of films I knew nothing about. There were just too many of both.
What I want to talk about is some themes that the book comments a lot on. They are important themes that everybody is talking about nowdays: autism, gender issues, the current political situation in the US. I understand that the author wanted to paint a picture of modern America, but it seems like he desperately tries to join the conversation and has nothing new to say.
Another thing is the culmination. After he has been baiting us for so long with the remarks that we will find out all in the end, the culmination we get is disappointing. He doesn’t lie, we do find out all, but we get what seems like a summary on the life of Nero Golden up to date, taken form any gangster fiim, you name it. And the big reveal, I got it already in the first third of the book.
That said, Rushdy is brilliant in writing about what he knows: the immigration, the longing for home, cultures, literature, a certain mood in the air. The book has a lot of atmospheric cinematographic descriptions and it can be easily dissected into expressive quotes. Sadly, these quotes don’t make a good novel.
These I only some points I wanted to touch upon, but I could have talked about it for a long time, which is too one of the upsides of this novel, and it can be highly recommended for a book club.
I won’t talk long about all the references to the very end of the end of the book (When we finally discovered…) og the intertextual references, which were really interesting when done with context, but for the most part were an irritating list of films I knew nothing about. There were just too many of both.
What I want to talk about is some themes that the book comments a lot on. They are important themes that everybody is talking about nowdays: autism, gender issues, the current political situation in the US. I understand that the author wanted to paint a picture of modern America, but it seems like he desperately tries to join the conversation and has nothing new to say.
Another thing is the culmination. After he has been baiting us for so long with the remarks that we will find out all in the end, the culmination we get is disappointing. He doesn’t lie, we do find out all, but we get what seems like a summary on the life of Nero Golden up to date, taken form any gangster fiim, you name it. And the big reveal, I got it already in the first third of the book.
That said, Rushdy is brilliant in writing about what he knows: the immigration, the longing for home, cultures, literature, a certain mood in the air. The book has a lot of atmospheric cinematographic descriptions and it can be easily dissected into expressive quotes. Sadly, these quotes don’t make a good novel.
These I only some points I wanted to touch upon, but I could have talked about it for a long time, which is too one of the upsides of this novel, and it can be highly recommended for a book club.