Hey, so did you know that Salman Rushdie doesn’t like Donald Trump? Because he doesn’t. He really, really hates him, in fact. I know this because I read the Golden House, which is ostensibly about Rene and his relationship with his neighbors, the Golden Family, but it is actually quite a bit about the fact that Donald Trump became president and Rushdie didn’t like it. This is good and bad, in some ways the device works, but in others it was a little too […]
I want this book to end up like Gatsby
I’m temporarily skipping two reviews I owe y’all because I need this book closed and behind me just as fast as possible. The Golden House may have started a little interesting, teasing the hidden history of a family trying to start fresh, but it started to go downhill fast and then just wallowed at the bottom. It’s another one of those books that doesn’t feel the need to use full quotations or breaks for dialogue and thinks it’s artsy. At one point, a character is trying […]
1001 nights of hidden meanings.
I don’t know a whole lot about The Arabian Nights (or 1001 Nights), but I do know the general premise, thanks to popular culture—Scheherazade spins a web for 1001 nights to save her life from the whims of a capricious ruler and so captivates him with her storytelling that he allows her to live at the very end. The stories are populated with thieves, the poor, the rich, rulers, and djinn. It is this fabric against which Salman Rushdie sets his Two Years Eight Months […]