Disappointed... :(
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I bought The Satanic Verses for many different reasons.... the main one being to see why there was so much contorversy surrounding the book....
Even though the book in my opinion was very cleverly written with highly intriguing characters, I don't know, I just didn't enjoy the book. Whilst reading the book I was disappointed as I thought it would offer me more than what it did, which was hardly anything. As a Muslim, I wasn't as offended as others because I thought the book was a higly imaginative work of fiction. I found the characters in the book very intriguing and completely fell in love with the characters of the young teenage girls as I thought they were hilarious and correctly portrayed young teenagers. I liked the cross of cultures and the surreality of certain aspects of the text. I thought the idea of good and bad, and what is really good and bad very intelligent and also thought provoking. But even then, I just didn't enjoy the book. Maybe it was because the text was so small... maybe because there was too much imagery, maybe because it just didn't have that little something in it for me.
I see a lot of mixed reaction to this book, which is good as not everyones opinion is the same, but for me: the book was very intelligent but I just didn't enjoy it.
I do recommend it however, to most people. As its one of those books that everyone should read and draw their own opinions of. I need to read his other books to compare them against this one.
Not very helpful as a review I know. Sorry. I'm just torn bewteen my opinions of this book.
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ENTERTAINING, MEMORABLE AND WELL WORTH THE EFFORT
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Definitely hard-going - after reading `The Angel Gibreel', I returned straight to the beginning and re-read so as to truly feel I was in the story - but, ultimately, worth the effort. This is a book that requires active engagement with its material and, that being the case, will leave images and thoughts in your mind long after the final page is read.
The dream sequences, while entertaining as (almost) stand-alone pieces, are woven into a similarly entertaining and dream-like narrative. Each section entertains and provokes, and each section has its own story to tell. Piece those elements together and you have very good, almost great, novel.
`Almost' due to the pace and/or length of `Ellowen Deeowen'. However, that leaves another eight sections that more than make up for that draggy third section so, if you're thinking of reading it - which is probably why you're reading these reviews - then all I can say is `highly recommended'.
NB: Don't read it if you're looking for an overt diss on Islam or religion in general though. It's a meditative piece that highlights a number of issues relating to conflict between the secular and the religious. It's about identity and not about insult.
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The biggest load of crap I have ever read!
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Satanic Verses is quite frankly the biggest load of crap I have ever had the misfortune to read. Salman Rushdie is both a terrible and untalented writer (maybe the worst I have ever read), who has serious emotional problems. If it wasn't for his attack and attempted satire of Islam, making for a controversial topic, he would never have been recognised as a writer, let alone receive a knighthood for his literary services! With strange twisted plots, far too many characters and the akward writing style, I struggled to find the motivation to continue on to the end of this novel. Should you own a copy - rip it into thousands of pieces, burn it, use it for wiping your bottom next time you run out of toilet paper (you choose) - but whatever you do, don't waste your precious time reading this trash! If you are looking for a great read, by a brilliant writer though, do read 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' or 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini.
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Pretentious Drivel
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Well don't believe the hype. This book is the biggest pile of pretentious drivel I have ever read, whole passages are incomprehensible as to what the hell is going on, new characters are introduced every page making it impossible to follow whatever story there is. I would have been delighted to read a critique on religion as an atheist myself, but this book adds nothing but confusion. I can understand the death threats, after reading this I felt like murdering the author myself, not for religious reasons, but just for the pure tripe he had put in front of me and made me waste numerous hours of my life. Terrible, awful, stupendously bad, sorry Amazon but tell your customers not to buy this book.
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Rushdie and Satan have a lot to answer for
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`Once upon a time - it was and it was not so, as the old stories used to say, it happened and it never did - maybe, then, or maybe not...' and so on. I have noted before the tendency of the British literary aristocracy to evolve into self-indulgent, rambling luvvies. Salman Rushdie can be counted among their number and is one of the worst offenders. Of course to criticise anyone in the elitist circle of smug and haughty British academia guarantees a sneering accusation of philistinism.
A Sikh woman strapped with explosives blows up a plane above London, leaving two survivors to fall unharmed to earth; Indian expatriates, whose destinies become intertwined, as one adopts the personality of the angel Gibreel and the other becomes a devil. The Satanic Verses is an inflated allegory of good and evil written in a hallucinatory magic realism which is both cartoonish and impenetrable. It would be better off being edited and turned into a Terry Gilliam film. No doubt it is a feat of the imagination and deeply informed, but the overall effect is simply too esoteric, too fragmented and unstructured (in other words, too elitist) for the majority of readers; a verbal dysentery that is too clever by half. It is the sort of novel that people pretend (out of fear and embarrassment) to have read and enjoyed or been offended by. The whole book is a satirical swipe at familiar targets, from Britain to Bollywood and of course Islam, but then Rushdie's real crime wasn't blasphemy. It was hubris.
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