The emporer's new clothes....
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Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.
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A book to go in any long or short list of master pieces
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What can I say about midnight's children that has not already been said. I would put it on par with one hundred years of solitude. You have to read it to know what I am talking about.
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Exciting
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Despite what some reviewers have said about this book I must say that I found it easy to get into. The characters are all so beautifully described with such fabulously intriguing details. The settings made me want to go to India. And as a book about India I enjoyed this enormously.
The parts set in Pakistan were more difficult for me. I really would have preferred the character to have stayed in India because I think that the book loses something by being transported suddenly to Pakistan.
I very rarely agree with the Booker Prize as being a good barometer of literary efforts, in fact I can barely think of one book that has won it that I have actually liked, but this book is something different. Perhaps just a bit too much of that 'magical realism' (sorry to people who like that).
A great read, but not perfect.
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hype = a lot of hot air
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I was so excited when I first saw this book. A magic realist story about India? With politics, intrigue and tons of hype? Yes please!
But it turned out that the hype was just that: hype. I like my books long and involved, but this book could have been written in half the words used - never a good sign. The main character was irritating in the extreme, the language lacked clarity, and the entire style reeked of self-importance in a way that just made me want to bash my head (or better yet, the book) against something hard.
I'll be honest. I do my very best never to hate a book; they all have their redeeming qualities. And it is clear that Salman Rushdie put a lot of painstaking care and effort into the research behind Midnight's Children, and into the plot itself. An english literature undergrad once told me that it is technically brilliantly structured (I don't know why, but I'll take her word for it). So, if you're focus is more on the structure and research of a novel rather than the characters or readability, go ahead and read it. But frankly it just isn't my cup of tea.
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Good but not great
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Midnight's Children is a book one may approach with some kind of awe; something akin to entering a monument. First, there are the prizes it has received and the fame it lent to its writer. Then, there is the sheer ambition and courage of Salman Rushdie's enterprise: trying to capture the identity of a sub-continent and half a century of its history in a single book. Finally, there is the subject itself: the multitude and diversity of the Indian sub-continent, its complicated history, defy any attempt to neatly and rationally summarise it.
Now, to me, Midnight's Children feels more like a scale model of a monument than the real thing. To make myself clearer, it has all the ingredients but does not quite get there. Sure the story is engrossing and Salman Rushdie's ability to create a multi-layered tale from one single voice is amazing but, in my view, some flaws distinguish it as a very good book rather than a true masterpiece. I found some of the author's stylistic gimmicks annoying (his habit of putting three words together without separation sign becomes quickly tiresome and he never really rises to, say Faulkner or Celine's level, in his attempt to bend the boundaries of language into some form which more immediately embodies his subject) and his character's impulse to tease the reader jumping parts of the story before quickly coming back to a chronological order was repeated to often. Then the story itself loses some momentum in the last third of the novel.
All in all, these weaknesses should not prevent anybody from reading and enjoying this book, but for me this is not Salman Rushdie's masterpiece; the title pertains to Shalimar the Clown.
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