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The Ground beneath her Feet

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 6,101 ratings · 387 reviews

The ground shifts repeatedly beneath the reader's feet during the course of Salman Rushdie's sixth novel, a riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the high-octane world of rock & roll.

Readers get their first clues early on that the universe Rushdie is creating here is not quite the one we know: Jesse Aron Parker, for example, wrote Heartbreak Hotel; Carly Simon a...more The ground shifts repeatedly beneath the reader's feet during the course of Salman Rushdie's sixth novel, a riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the high-octane world of rock & roll.

Readers get their first clues early on that the universe Rushdie is creating here is not quite the one we know: Jesse Aron Parker, for example, wrote Heartbreak Hotel; Carly Simon and Guinevere Garfunkel sang Bridge over Troubled Water; and Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae starred in South Pacific.

And as the novel progresses, Rushdie adds unmistakable elements of science fiction to his already patented magical realism, with occasionally uneven results.

Rushdie's cunning musician is Ormus Cana, the Bombay-born founder of the most popular group in the world. Ormus's Eurydice (and lead singer) is Vina Apsara, the daughter of a Greek American woman and an Indian father who abandoned the family.

What these two share, besides amazing musical talent, is a decidedly twisted family life: Ormus's twin brother died at birth and communicates to him from "the other side"; his older brothers, also twins, are, respectively, brain-damaged and a serial killer. Vina, on the other hand, grew up in rural West Virginia where she returned home one day to find her stepfather and sisters shot to death and her mother hanging from a rafter in the barn.

No wonder these two believe they were made for each other.

Narrated by Rai Merchant, a childhood friend of both Vina and Ormus, The Ground beneath Her Feet begins with a terrible earthquake in 1989 that swallows Vina whole, then moves back in time to chronicle the tangled histories of all the main characters and a host of minor ones as well. Rushdie's canvas is huge, stretching from India to London to New York and beyond.

In addition, there's plenty of room for him to punctuate this epic tale with pointed commentary on his own situation: Muslim-born Rai, for example, remarks that "my parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear.... You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again."

Despite earthquakes, heartbreaks, and a rip in the time-space continuum, The Ground beneath Her Feet may be the most optimistic, accessible novel Rushdie has yet written. --Alix Wilber(less)

Hardcover, 592 pages

Published 1999 by Vintage

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Apr 08, 2013 Lucrezia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tutti abbiamo qualcosa che ci sostiene a questo mondo, ma se quel qualcosa viene meno allora che si fa?
Saremo gli Ormus Cama della situazione o i Rai?
Si può vivere attaccati ad un ricordo e inseguendolo?
O si deve andare avanti?
Cosa succede quando la terra sotto i tuoi piedi inghiotte quello che hai di più caro?
Hai perso solo quello o anche te stesso?
E quel qualcosa è mai stato veramente tuo?
Fin dove può arrivare un amicizia?

Rushdie cerca di rispondere a tutto questo e a molto più...
Ecco perc...more

10 likes · like · see review

Oct 26, 2007 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Knew it was my favorite book ever as soon as I read it. Read all the others I'd said that about again just to be sure. It was. Rushdie's polyglot wordplay and his gift for pun (Why is it that multi-lingual writers like Rushdie and Nabokov are the most exceptional punsters?) are irrepressible. It's a transcontinental, slightly-fantastical elseworld story in which making music seems the most important thing a person can do. Add to it all the burbling, effusive joy with which Rushdie handles langua...more

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Aug 03, 2007 Neda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i will confess that i started "satanic verses" ... key word, started. i read the first 10-15 pages, and realized that i had NO idea what i was reading. so i turned to a nifty cliff note thing on line and realized that what i had read and re-read four times was the protagonists falling through the air after their airplane kabooms ... surprising to me. and thats when i did not read anymore (maybe some other day).

i picked this one up hesitantly. i wanted to read something by rushdie, and a good fri...more

6 likes · like · see review

Oct 31, 2008 Lavinia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, fiction, in-en

oops! i did it again. i started it for the third time. and i'm determined to finish and like it [i intend the same thing with ulysses and foucault's pendulum - i'll see about the rest]. if only i could get over the first 100 pages. wish me luck. i can't believe i paid 43.8 RON in 2005 to get this book. well, this might be just another reason for reading it ;)

U2 feat. rushdie wrote a beautiful song based on the book
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ-XKz...

***
24.10.2008

"The only people who see the...more

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Mar 28, 2008 Debbie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-to-read-before-you-die, fiction

A reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the modern world of rock & roll. There are many cultural references, but often twisted in interesting ways. Famous people appear, but in different roles than readers expect. I found this the most fun aspect of the book--wondering how many of the jokes I actually got.

Ormus Cama is a brilliant musician born in Bombay, India. The love of his life is Vina Apsara, a half-Indian woman who moves to Bombay when she is a young adolescent. The two...more

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Dec 19, 2007 Kirstie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people interested in music and epic novels

I think Rushdie can be a bit daunting sometimes because he's really an intellectual through and through. He fills his writing with countless references to mythology and history in a way that I find rewarding but some may find difficult. Rushdie creates the story of a band and music that grows to epic proportions. We follow the story of Rai, a photographer who falls precariously in love with Vina in India while still very much a boy. He basically devotes his whole life to Vina and the language is...more

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Nov 02, 2008 Tami Lynn Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list

I really wanted to read this book, and though I haven't read much else by him, I really like Salman Rushdie.. But I just couldn't get into this. Every time I picked it up I couldn't get through more than 20 pages without putting it down and finding myself with no incentive to pick it back up again. From October 2007 until about a month ago I hadn't even gotten through half the book.

Suffice it to say I was not impressed. I felt like it was just this long-winded story of nothing. There was so much...more

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Jun 26, 2009 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: faves

Orpheus and Eurydice as rock stars. Epic tale of music 'n' love.
And the deification of genius.

Also, highlights celebrity's recent secularisation. How today's stars function for community instead of idolatry.

"the point is always reached after which the gods no longer share their lives with mortal men and women, they die or wither away or retire... Now that they've gone, the high drama's over. What remains is ordinary human life."

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Feb 16, 2008 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Jason, Scott, Dorise, Amy, Melissa, Tina

Shelves: music, fiction, religion, sci-fi

I think this is my favorite Rushdie book yet.

No less of a deep dive into Bombay, India, Europe, current political events, religion and history than the other books of his I've read, this one adds Rock and the modern world as a central theme, and the mythical-magical, so to speak analysis of power and alternate worlds teeming with real and unreal examples of iconic ways that the world just is.

The Orpheus and Eurdike storyline this is woven around is brilliantly exhumed and turned into living roc...more

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Jun 28, 2007 Ira rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Greek Odyssey and Rock 'n' Roll - awesome combination and not a real surprising one either. After all, the Greek Gods of the last several decades may be Rock stars. Rushdie blends the myth of Orpheus (an actual rock god) and the story of fictional musicians, that incorporates fictional Madonnas, Jim Morrisons, Hendrix's and others. Rushdie did his hmoework for The Boss is in there and even the Girevious Angel himself. The story takes place in Europe (U.K and India) and The States. This one as a...more

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Jan 14, 2008 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another one I have to thank Annie for. She would rave and rave about this book, and I finally bought a cheap copy at the Beijing bookstore. Every sentence Rushdie writes in this book is close to perfect. I don't know how he sustained it for so many pages. It covers pretty much every major literary theme somewhere, and manages to be at once wholly in the time period it describes, and outside of it. Everything disintegrates like a sugar cube in a glass of cold water as it goes on. Just a phenomena...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Padma rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a real fan of Salman Rushdie and have read with enjoyment most all of his books. I listened (or tried) to this book on audible and could not get through it. It is very long and at about half way I gave up; so it may not be fair for me to give it a rating but....
I found that Rushdie rambled and that lots of the parts seemed irrelevant to the main story. Even though the Satanic Verses was long and had many characters I found them all interesting; and although I did have to listen to it three...more

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Nov 18, 2011 Filipe Arede rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O chão que ela pisa, é uma obra de Salman Rushdie, aclamado autor britânico de origem indiana, que conta uma estória baseada num triangulo romântico, sendo os seus vértices as personagens principais do livro: Vina Apsara, Ormus Cama e Rai.
O livro inicia-se com uma analepse. O autor escolhe uma das personagens, Rai, para ser o narrador desta estória, e principia o livro a meio da narrativa com a morte de uma das personagens principais: a diva da música Vina Apsara.
A partir daí vai à infância de c...more O chão que ela pisa, é uma obra de Salman Rushdie, aclamado autor britânico de origem indiana, que conta uma estória baseada num triangulo romântico, sendo os seus vértices as personagens principais do livro: Vina Apsara, Ormus Cama e Rai.
O livro inicia-se com uma analepse. O autor escolhe uma das personagens, Rai, para ser o narrador desta estória, e principia o livro a meio da narrativa com a morte de uma das personagens principais: a diva da música Vina Apsara.
A partir daí vai à infância de cada uma das personagens e constrói brilhantemente as fundações em que se baseia toda a sua estória na vida adulta, onde se passa a trama principal da obra.
Este foi, confesso, um livro que me custou muito a ler. São mais de quinhentas páginas sobre amor, rock-and-roll, mitologia, numa obra onde o saber cultural do seu autor no inunda sem aviso. São dezenas de referências mitológicas e históricas, sendo que o livro se baseará numa metáfora: o mito de Orfeu (Segundo o mito de Orfeu – este era conhecido na antiguidade clássica como sendo possuidor de uma voz mágica e sobrenatural – este depois da morte da sua amada Eurídice teria tentado ir busca-la ao Hades – inferno – mas teria como condição não olhar para ela antes de saírem do mundo das sombas. Como não conseguiu resistir a essa tentação, Eurídice perdeu-se para sempre no inferno.)
Nunca tinha lido nada de Salman Rushdie e fiquei abismado. Apesar das primeiras paginas terem sido muito difíceis, a verdade é que com o decorrer da narrativa e com o desenvolvimento profundo que o autor faz das personagens, não há forma de não nos apaixonar-mos pela sua estória, pelas suas aventuras e pelo seu sofrimento.
Apesar das dificuldades iniciais da escrita de Rushdie, a verdade é que acabámos por adorar este livro e a forma culta como o autor reescreveu o mito clássico de Orfeu. Aconselhamos, sem qualquer margem para dúvida, a leitura desta obra, que é, no nosso entender, um elogio à arte de conjugar a boa escrita com a grandeza cultural.

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Aug 05, 2011 Madhurabharatula Pranav Rohit Kasinath rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: big-disappointment, drama, humor, imaginative-retelling, mythology, romance

I walked away from this book with many feelings, but, principal among them was boredom. I have seen a lot of people labelling Tolkein's work as self indulgent. Tolkein, my friends, was lyrical. His book had heart, soul. His characters were weighed down by destiny and the strength of their choices. Rushdie, in the other hand, is self indulgent.
I have read The Moor's Last Sigh, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath her Feet by Rushdie and this w...more I walked away from this book with many feelings, but, principal among them was boredom. I have seen a lot of people labelling Tolkein's work as self indulgent. Tolkein, my friends, was lyrical. His book had heart, soul. His characters were weighed down by destiny and the strength of their choices. Rushdie, in the other hand, is self indulgent.
I have read The Moor's Last Sigh, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath her Feet by Rushdie and this was the book that let me down. It had nothing of the erudite restraint of the Moor's Last Sigh, the magical realism and haunting mysticism of Shalimar the Clown, the quirky historical mystery of The Enchantress of Florence, or the delicious ambiguity of The Satanic Verses. The Ground Beneath her Feet is a rant, Rushdie's attempt at retelling a great love story. It has its moments, but, overall - it falls hard and fails to land on its feet.
The story revolves around the tumultous relationship between Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara, two musical prodigies whose lives are intertwined irreversibly. Shadowing them, sometimes friend and oftentimes jealous voyeur is Umeed Rai Merchant, photographer and a man hopelessly in love with Vina himself. He narrates the story and is Rushdie's manic voice transmitted onto the page.
The story is an attempt at reworking the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a more contemporary setting, Vina is damaged goods and Ormus is unloved by his parents and brought up in an India in the throes of post colonial reinvention. The first half of the book is the best and most moving part of this journey. Set entirely in a Bombay filled with Englishmen, Colonial sympathisers and anglicized Parsi Patriarchs Rushdie's magic is truly apparent as I was unable to stop reading the book for the first 300 odd pages. Rushdie seems comfortable writing about his country of birth and of the city he favours most - Bombay. The heartache seems to resonate from the pages as a vindication of the agony of his forced exile. This part also deals with a lot of amazing characters who you learn to love. And then - (if I may use the name of one of the chapters in the book) comes 'The Whole Catastrophe'
This book is too myriad and jumbled to give you a proper summary of the plot. Characters step in and out and there are the standard ridiculous coincidences and the heavy foreshadowing that Rushdie is famous for. However, as soon as the action steps over to England and America, he loses the reader. Perhaps he is not as comfortable writing about these places, perhaps he just doesn't have the knack of making these foregn climes as attractive as the coast of Maharashtra - for whatever the reason, once the action shifts, the book nosedives and never completely recovers.
And there was the science fiction. Rushdie seems to have added some of his musings from his most hallucinogen induced dreams. Sure, the entire subplot of the time-space continuum is a metaphor for the unstable times we live in where contradictions supplant our daily fare. Sure, Rushdie has a long history of superpower imbued and troubled heroes. Sure, it is even a little diverting, interesting to see how all this pans out. And then, in the end - Nothing. No cataclysm, no catastrophe, no proper tying up of the threads of that particular subplot. Just a wispy wraith on a chair giving an astral message and the plot is erased.
This book is unstable, forgetting important characters for a long period of time, giving space to characters who are moping and self indulgent (read Vina and Ormus). The lead pair was a tad annoying, and , considering they take up most of the space of the book, I was extremely ticked off for the major part.
And there is the question of love. Rushdie impresses upon the reader the importance of the 'Love' that Vina and Ormus shared. Call me old fashioned but there is no love without fidelity and Vina dabbles in infidelity so rampant it makes Madonna look like a nun. This entire concept of love being more than shared bodies might appeal to some but not to me. Love is fidelity. Period. Ormus Cama embodies this much more than Vina Apsara ever does in this book, all Vina seems to love is herself.
The ending is too contrived, and too forced to make an impression. It brought to mind the amazing ending scene in the World According to Garp by John Irving with none of the emotional whallop that moment packed. By the time you reach the last few 100 pages, the amazing and very real world of Post Colonial Bombay in the beginning of the book seems like a wonderful dream and the crazy pop culture inspired name dropping rant in the final pages, which seems to go nowhere, is just tedium.
Nuff said I suppose - Mr. Rushdie, if you want to impress us, it takes a lot more than just clever wordplay.(less)

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Nov 15, 2010 Palmyrah rated it 3 of 5 stars

As someone whose background has a few things in common with Salman Rushdie's--South Asian origin, heavily Westernized and secular outlook, roughly similar in age and both writers by profession--I'm ambivalent about the man. Some of what seem like his virtues to Western critics seem like faults or cheap shots to me, and vice versa.

I am also a lifelong lover of rock music, so I was suspicious of this book in particular. High-culture attempts to get under the skin of rock 'n' roll are rarely, if ev...more As someone whose background has a few things in common with Salman Rushdie's--South Asian origin, heavily Westernized and secular outlook, roughly similar in age and both writers by profession--I'm ambivalent about the man. Some of what seem like his virtues to Western critics seem like faults or cheap shots to me, and vice versa.

I am also a lifelong lover of rock music, so I was suspicious of this book in particular. High-culture attempts to get under the skin of rock 'n' roll are rarely, if ever successful, usually ending up either blandly patronizing or quivering with wannabe enthusiasm. Though he avoids both these aful extremes, it turns out that Rushdie is no better at writing about rock than any other 'grown-up' author or critic. His vision of the Rock Life is pretty much the tabloid version, and the song lyrics he comes up with for his fictional band, VTO, are beyond dire. If you're a rock fan who doesn't read much high-class fiction, and you're attracted to this book because of its rock subject matter, my advice is: forget it.

Worse, the damn' thing is science fiction, and a stock example of a stock sub-genre at that: the alternative history novel. Given the contents of the lead review on this page, it is no spoiler to point out that The Ground Beneath Her Feet is set, not in our familiar world, but one that is sort-of-but -not-quite like it. I guess Rushdie figured that two Bombay Indians could never become the world's biggest rock stars in this universe, so he created a whole new one for them.

Third, the book starts really, really badly. The prose is overburdened and clumsy, the metaphoric imagery that is so vital to the magical-realist project more worthy of Rushdie's imitators than of the man himself. After the first fifty pages or so, the style settles down, though, and after that it becomes a pleasure to read. The pleasure is alloyed, however, by occasional lapses.

In the end, however, I found The Ground Beneath Her Feet a damn good read. It is one of the most philosophical of Rushdie's novels in any case; besides, its discursive first-person narrator often digresses to share with the reader his opinions on this and that; and I found these philosophical interludes and observations on life amusing, enjoyable and very much to the point; there were several times when I caught myself reading with a nodding head and a rueful grin on my face. This is not how Salman Rushdie usually takes me.

The book sort of falls apart at the end. Its narrative arc is that of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and as the narrator informs us fairly early on in the proceedings, that myth makes lousy showbiz because it has an unhappy ending--Orpheus's attempted rescue of his lover from Hades fails; he lives out the remainder of his days disconsolate and is ultimately torn to pieces by a group of maenads, crazed female devotees of the god Dionysius. This clearly had Rushdie seriously worried while he was writing the TGBHF--so worried he actually shares the problem with the reader a couple of times, maybe so as to prepare us for disappointment. In the end he contrives a happy ending of sorts without straying too far from the narrative arc of the original Orpheus legend. And that is all that I'm going to say about that.

The above observations explain why I have only awarded three stars to The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Yet despite its faults, I really enjoyed reading this book, and that explains why it didn't get fewer than three. Very few people in the world can write so well--on his day--as Salman Rushdie, and well-made prose is always, regardless of content, a joy to read.(less)

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Aug 22, 2010 Becky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow! I never thought I would see the day! A Salman Rushdie novel that is not physically painful to plough through, and in places, an actual joy to read. Okay, so occasionally he goes into over verbose mode, but these slips into lyrical doom mongering are kept mostly in the background during this tale of love, music, and human emotion. To be honest, I could do without the trademark Rushdie collapses into magical realism that occasionally pepper this book, as the central story, and the main charac...more

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Jul 12, 2009 Jonathanstray Stray rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’d never read Rushdie before. I can see why he has a Jihad against him — even in this book which only incidentally addresses religion, he is not shy about saying he sees no place for it. But that is beside the point. Rushdie is, truly, a brilliant writer.

The story is something about two kids from India who grow up to form the biggest rock and roll band of all time in some sort of closely-allied alternate reality, outselling even the Beatles. The themes are much wider ranging. There is the love...more I’d never read Rushdie before. I can see why he has a Jihad against him — even in this book which only incidentally addresses religion, he is not shy about saying he sees no place for it. But that is beside the point. Rushdie is, truly, a brilliant writer.

The story is something about two kids from India who grow up to form the biggest rock and roll band of all time in some sort of closely-allied alternate reality, outselling even the Beatles. The themes are much wider ranging. There is the love of music and art, the strange workings of culture and politics, the sense of belonging or being an outsider, and finally, in the end, a love triangle. Pretty standard literary stuff, I suppose, but there’s a lot in there. In some sense it’s all in there. He talks about everything. It’s breathtaking. And the language is lovely, poetry all the way through.
There’s a sly humour through the whole thing as well, visible most clearly through the alternate reality he creates, where “Jesse Parker” wrote Heartbreak Hotel, Madonna is a music critic, and JFK survived the assassination attempt (there’s also a crazy novel called “Watergate” where Nixon is thrown out of office for bugging the democrats.) Actually, more precisely, the novel is set in two parallel universes, one of which is our own and gradually fades throughout the story to become just another possibility that didn’t happen.

Otherwise, I really don’t know how to describe this book. It’s pretty damn amazing, one of the finest works I’ve ever read, both in terms of scope and execution. Rushdie is incredibly in touch with very many things, both academic (mythology, film theory) and popular (music, politics, Bombay street life) and as a result his novel is real and complete in a way I find deeply inspiring.

I’m going to end by quoting a passage that I found particularly resonant, perhaps the only time I’ve ever seen a deep part of myself expressed well in words:

For a long while I have believed … that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a play-house or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our places of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

No sooner did we have ships than we rushed to sea, sailing across oceans in paper boats. No sooner did we have cars than we hit the road. No sooner did we have airplanes then we zoomed to the furthers corners of the globe. Now we year for the moon’s dark side, the rocky plains of Mars, the rings of Saturn, the interstellar deeps. We send mechanical photographers into orbit, or on one-way journeys to the stars, and we weep at the wonders they transmit; we are humbled by the mighty images of far-off galaxies standing like cloud pillars in the sky, and we give names to alien rocks, as if they were our pets. We hunger for warp space, for the outlying rim of time. And this is the species that kids itself it likes to stay at home, to bind itself with--what are they called again? ”ties"
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Jun 01, 2009 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is, as others have noted, not an easy read. I hope that's part of the Rushdie genius for understatement that I've acquired, but I'm pretty sure it's just me, wishing I was clever enough to get half of the references that get tossed off here, like so many bread crumbs leading me, where? Home? Into a volcano that closes a chapter, and a life that the world has been watching, and adoring, along with the childhood friend that really, truly loves her, but let's the love of her life use his geni...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Daniel is currently reading it · review of another edition

this is much more than a fictive history of rock music. It's also a novel about the making and the meaning of myths. Ormus(reffering to Greek myth Orpheus) the lover of Vina(Reffering to Myth Euridice) is thrown into a coma after a car-crash in England, but is brought back from death by Vina. Vina is swallowed up by an earthquake in Mexico (on February 14, 1989 and to mention the Year of issuing "Fatwa"). while her two lovers(Ormus and Rai) struggle to bring her back through their art.

So the O...more

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Apr 20, 2009 Meredith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-literature, favorites, india, magical-realism, reviewed, postmodern

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was my third foray into Salman Rushdie (the first two being "The Satanic Verses" and "The Enchantress of Florence"). What made this reading experience so pleasurable, beyond the exquisite and sometimes raw prose, was being familiar enough with Rushdie's work now to recognize a few universal themes. Perhaps most notable are the following three:

1) Estrangement from India. India itself is alternately protagonist and antagonistic, sometimes driving away the main characters, but also sometimes r...more This was my third foray into Salman Rushdie (the first two being "The Satanic Verses" and "The Enchantress of Florence"). What made this reading experience so pleasurable, beyond the exquisite and sometimes raw prose, was being familiar enough with Rushdie's work now to recognize a few universal themes. Perhaps most notable are the following three:

1) Estrangement from India. India itself is alternately protagonist and antagonistic, sometimes driving away the main characters, but also sometimes reeling them back in. Wherever they flee, she is a reality they will never escape. In this novel, Rushdie examines in some depth the concept of detachment from the East (i.e., "disorientation").

2) The "goddess vs. property" conceptualization of women (p. 486). In Rushdie's novels, particularly this one, women harness remarkable power. Reminiscent of Kawabata's "The House of Sleeping Beauties", the woman becomes "an empty receptacle, an arena of discourse, and we can invent her in our own image, as once we invented god" (p. 485). The male characters pour their entire selves into women like Vina or the Florentine enchantress, women whom they idolize. In this case, Vina becomes that "empty receptacle" for Ormus' and Rai's hopes, failures, desires, passions, expectations, shortcomings, disappointments, neuroses, etc., just as the sleeping beauties do for the old men in Kawabata's story. In fact, it is not just Ormus and Rai who use Vina this way--the entire world, captivated by her singing and atypical candor in the press, makes Vina its "empty receptacle". Even in death, she continues to function as the tabula rasa for various therapists, religious gurus, theorists, philosophers, and pundits--all of whom seek both to derive greater meaning and profit from her untimely death.

3) Doubles, twins, doppelgangers, and mirror images. The end chapters of this book are densely populated with Vina lookalikes and impostors. Ormus is haunted by his dead twin brother, Gayomart, who offers him visions of songs yet to be written and glimpses into alternate realities that torment him to no end, ultimately driving him mad. Mirror imagery throughout the story reinforces these dualistic themes.

Ultimately, this is the story of a very flawed, human love, something the narrative tells us explicitly. Ormus and Vina hurt many people throughout the course of their stormy on-again-off-again courtship--perhaps themselves most of all. Rai is the only character who escapes the destructive triangle, emerging not only with life and limb, but with a tamer, more humane version of Vina (Mira Celano). He achieves happiness with Mira that he could not with Vina--while Vina shunned the notions of fidelity and marriage, Mira craves them. And, perhaps most importantly, he does not have to share her body and soul with Ormus Cama. (less)

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Mar 20, 2012 Louisa Heath rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'All my life, I worshipped her. Her golden voice, her beauty's beat. How she made us feel, how she made me real, and the ground beneath her feet.'

Midnight's Children (the first Rushdie book I read) is certainly a hard act to follow. One had to wonder if the author could be capable of producing another work of so great an ilk. Suffice to say that I stopped comparing the two after less than ten pages, it does justice neither to the work nor Rushdie himself to waste time in petty comparison. When forming an opinion of a book it is important to, at least initially, hold and view it in isolation.

While music, rock 'n' roll, is undoubtedly at the centre of The Ground Beneath Her Feet this is more than just a mere story about musicians. It is also more than just a story about love, a love that lasts lifetimes, a love that entangles more than two, a 'huge rotten love'. There is a greater depth and message to this novel than an embellished rehashing of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. At it's heart this is a story of 'disorientation: loss of the East', loss of direction, loss of stability.

Part magical realism, part alternate history, part fictional biography, part confession; Rushdie expertly blends the various strands of his narrative to create something that feels incredibly vivid and alive. We are drawn slowly but surely into this artificial world, where it is Paul McCartney rather than John Lennon who is cut down in his prime, where Lou Reed is a woman and where The Who is instead titled The Magic Numbers. Warped facts are dropped into the novel with such confidence that one barely notices them, the underlying premise ('it shouldn't be this way') is steadily built up for some chapters before the reader discovers the secret of Ormus Cama's eyesight.

A near-constant pursuit of the woman who vanishes, The Ground Beneath Her Feet should not be dismissed as a simple love story. There is much more than initially meets the eye to this novel, it is not to be underestimated.
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Sep 18, 2012 Raisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-speculative-fiction, favorites

The Ground Beneath Her Feet is at its core a love story with a little rock n' roll thrown in for good measure. It mirrors the Greek tale of Orpheus, legendary musician and poet, and his wife Eurydice. U2's also written a song about the book.

The main characters- Ormus Cama, the musician, Vina Apsara, the beautiful and precocious singer and Umeed Rai Merchant, photographer (the book is told from Rai's point of view).

Many people dislike Rushdie. They say he didn't deserve the Booker of Bookers. T...more

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Aug 04, 2009 Marvin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: religion

An amazing novel my daughter brought with her on her last visit & highly recommended. And rightly so. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Rushdie is a cultural sponge, absorbing & smoothly integrating elements from the biblical tradition, Islam, Hinduism, & Greek & Roman mythology, along with amazing bits of Indian & American popular culture, especially popular music. The writing is brilliant & extremely clever, but never gets in the way of just telling a good stor...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Isabella rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the story of the great love and musical success of Ormus and Vina, as told by their childhood friend Rai, who himself moves in and out of the weird relationship Ormus and Vina have.

The world it takes place in is similar to ours, but not quite the same. There is another world (with is very much like the 'real' world), that Ormus can see into ever since losing the eyesight in his left eye in a car accident. There is a tear in the fabric between the two worlds and he can be in both, dependi...more

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Oct 15, 2009 Diana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This book, while long and twisting and twining and sometimes a little crazy, was a lot of fun to read, mostly because of Rushdie's wordplay and writing style. I truly appreciated how the book really meshed with my musical mind, because so many of the snippets of phrases he chose in the book were song lyrics and pop culture references, so I found that I couldn't keep reading because I had to finish the next line of the song in my head before I could move on! My friend Cindy and I have this habit...more

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Oct 01, 2007 Kelsey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The plot was somewhat odd, but this is the most beautifully written book I have ever read. Just go find something by this author and read it. He turns prose into poetry, makes it almost sing while you read it. Just, go read it.

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Jun 02, 2012 Nakib Hoq rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Here's ordinary human love beneath my feet. Fall away, if you must, contemptuous earth; melt, rocks, and shiver, stones. I'll stand my ground, right here. This I've discovered and worked for and earned. This is mine."

The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a wonderful tale of rock culture, love and sacrifice. It spans a couple of decades and relates how a love extremely transcending can affect both the lovers and the people around them who are also madly in love with them. It draws a magnificent paralle...more

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Jul 22, 2010 Katherine rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gave-up-on

I read the first quarter, skimmed to the half way point and then abandoned it. I read The Satanic Verses a few years ago. It was work at times but ultimately worth it. This one was all work with no payoff. He certainly still has an astounding grasp of complexity. His stories may seem to be weaving recklessly in myriad directions but he always manages to bring it all together - in other words - if he had written Lost I wouldn't have been left so intensely irritated after the grand finale. But, un...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Pete Iseppi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have been wanting to read a Rushdie book for a long time, and this one had been sitting on my book shelf for a long time, so I tought it would be a perfect fit.
Well, not so much. This was a strange book, at least in relation to the kind of books that I usually read. There's no doubt that Rushdie is an interesting writer, and it seems to me, a very smart guy. It's hard to describe this book. Much of it seems to be "stream of consciousness" kind of stuff. He takes events and such that actually h...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

salmon rushdie is truly a master. i know, i know, that's *such* a cliche. but after reading several of his books, this one really blew me away, and i am a convert to the rushdie cathedral once again. he has this way of constructing a paragraph where it starts with a simple idea or description of a character, broadens out to be a deep critical insight about all humanity, and then shrinking back in to the character once again. its an accordian-like breathing in-and-out that, well, makes me swoon a...more

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About Salman Rushdie

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a novelist and essayist. Much of his early fiction is set at least partly on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism, while a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.

His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, led to protests from Muslims in several coun...more

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“Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.” — 383 people liked it

“Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart.” — 115 people liked it

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