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Dec 16, 2009

Turhan rated it:

Midnight's Children is not at all a fast read; it actually walks the line of being unpleasantly the opposite. The prose is dense and initially frustrating in a way that seems almost deliberate, with repeated instances of the narrator rambling ahead to a point that he feels is important--but then, before revealing anything of importance, deciding that things ought to come in their proper order. This use of digressions (or, better put, quarter-digressions) can either be attributed to a charmingly More...

6 comments like (60 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Taylor rated it:

Back in 2000, lit critic James Wood wrote a huge manifesto on the problem of "the 'big' novel" for the New Atlantic (disguised as a review of Zadie Smith). He basically attacked quirky novels like Underworld, Infinite Jest & White Teeth. There were a lot of things about it that I agreed with - particularly his point that a lot of cutesy things some writers tend towards are in place of good structure. One major thing I didn't agree with was his inclusion of Rushdie in this lot of wacky More...

6 comments like (29 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Tanu rated it:

Updated on 23 January, 2012
When I originally read this novel, I thought the end was very pessimistic. In the light of Jaipur Festival, it seems ludicrously positive now. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, what a joke!

Original review
If beating around the bush was a crime; then, Salman Rushdie would be charged with aggravated assault and attempt to murder of that bush.

If there was of contest of master of digressions; he would emerge as the undisputed winner.

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11 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2010

miaaa rated it:

I should not even dare to write a review about this book. It's crazy, emotionally challenging, and able to bring you down and up, loving and hating the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, at the same time. But by recounting his story, no not just recount but Saleem did take me to India, to watch and experience the frenzy of the Independence, to the Midnight Children, to a bloody separation of Pakistan, to a 'meat versus vegetable' war which actually the Bangladesh separation from Pakistan. You know as a More...

32 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 02, 2007

Ben rated it:

This was an extremely good book; one which, for some reason, I couldn't quite fall in love with. I was, however, more and more impressed with Rushdie's master over his novel as I made my way through it.

Midnight's Children is as much a tale of history and nationhood as it is of a person. I think, in some sense, the book was a sort of authorial attempt to bring into the realm of substantial palpability everything that had happened to the Indian subcontinent since Independence in '47 (o More...

7 comments like (14 people liked it)

May 18, 2009

Whitaker rated it:

Have you ever been to a Hindu temple? It’s a riotous mass of orange, blue, purple, red, and green. Its walls seethe with deities. In one corner, Ganesha--the god with a human body and elephant head--sits on his vehicle, a rat. In another, a blue Krishna sits on a cow wooing cow girls by playing his flute. Durgha wearing a necklace of skulls kills a demon in another corner. Jasmine-decorated devotees stand around chanting. The press of people, the incense and the noise all combine and you lose yo More...

12 comments like (18 people liked it)

Dec 26, 2008

James rated it:

I have mixed feelings about this, and the whole project is so huge that I don't know what to say -- the closest analogue is probably "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and I definitely liked it better than that. It's a big national epic, and so on, and it has all sorts of crazy magical happenings. "The Tin Drum" is the same -- any novel with pretensions to "epic" status in the twentieth century has to resort to magic, I guess, because "realism" defines itsel More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2008

Ian rated it:

Midnight's Children is my first encounter with Salman Rushdie, so I didn't have many preconceptions when I began reading it. Relative to most novels, this one is lengthy, and it isn't exactly a light read, but it is crafted masterfully and is well worth turning through its pages until the end.

In general, it's a story of how an infant named Saleem, born at the moment of India's birth as an independent nation, is swapped with another infant shortly thereafter and finds his life interw More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2010

Ikra rated it:

Memang butuh semacam perjuangan untuk bisa melewati buku ini, kalimat demi kalimat, peristiwa demi peristiwa, bab demi bab, sampai pada akhir dari cerita panjang ini. Dan keputusan untuk tidak menyerah membaca buku ini dari sejak awal-awal halaman memang membawa saya pada kepuasan, sebuah apresiasi baru terhadap daya kreatif, imajinasi, serta gaya penulisan Salman Rushdie, sebuah alat bantu untuk dapat memaknai sejarah, memaknai "apa yang membuat segalanya menjadi seperti sekarang", da More...

8 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2010

indri rated it:

#2010-19# baca bareng mbak Endah

yang lahir di malam kemerdekaan India

Aku Saleem Sinai, dilahirkan pada dentang jam tengah malam, sementara dunia tertidur, India terbangun menuju kehidupan dan kebebasan. Bersamaan dengan Jawaharhal Nehru mengumandangkan, "Bertahun-tahun yang lalu kita berjanji untuk bertemu dengan takdir; dan sekarang tiba waktunya ketika kita akan menebus janji kita-- tidak sepenuhnya atau secara menyeluruh, tetapi secara sangat substansial.."
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15 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2010

Marieke rated it:

PART 1

I finished the book yesterday--but before I describe my overall response I have to start with this entry I wrote in my notebook while I was partway through.

I last opened this book ten years ago. This was the book that destroyed our little book club in college, my first year. A small group of avid readers, aspiring to read high and mighty works of literature. We made it through Snow Falling on Cedars successfully--I don't remember any discussion we had about it, bu More...

1 comment like (13 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2010

K.D. rated it:

Now, I am beginning to like Salman Rushdie.

Last year, I read his controversial novel The Satanic Verses and I hated it so I gave it a lone star.

Here in Midnight's Children, his playful and I-don't-care-if-you-like-me-or-not writing style is still very much around. This is a long read and it took me the whole week to reach up to its last word on page 647. It started strong, interesting and clear. Once details, too much of them, are introduced, I dazed off and became an ou More...

18 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 29, 2008

Pete rated it:

There is a quote in Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," spoken by the protagonist and narrator Saleem Sinai: "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world."

This is one of those brilliant books that is easier to appreciate than enjoy. It is an allegory about India's history around the time of independence and partition, told through (and explained by) the life and ancestry of Saleem, who was born at exactly midnight of India's independence day in More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Aug 12, 2008

Dusty rated it:

An important novel. Rushdie's narcissistic narrator, Saleem Sinai, achieves this narcissism from being the first child born on the day India won its independence from Britain. He got a letter from the prime minister making it official, and from this momentous, synchronous birth, the history of Saleem is twinned step-by-step to the history of India. This is what makes it An Important Novel, and I don't much care for Important Novels.

Saleem's point of view is a slippery, deceptive thin More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2008

Samantha rated it:

Hm. Where to start??? Okay... first of all, the book took me months to get through, about 2, but that could also be because of moving, etc etc. However, this is not a book that you could get through quickly or easily. A variety of colorful characters appear, disappear, and reappear later on, so you're constantly going back and checking who is who and how they're related! If i'd known that at the beginning, i would have listed everyone as they came up and kept track of all of them, :)

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8 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 24, 2007

Stephen rated it:

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was my first venture into his works - I picked it mainly on the recommendations on here and Amazon. I was not disappointed in the least.

Rushdie's mastery of his craft is impressive. His storytelling style reminded me very much of John Irving at his best - a series of vignettes, some overwhelmingly meaningful, some seemingly inconsequential with their purpose to-be-realized-later. He implements this style in an effective way too, with a narrator More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Michael rated it:

The best of Salman Rushie's novels, in my opinion. Sort of autobiographical, and sort of the story of Indian independence (and partition). The fifth paragraph is one of my favorites in English literature:

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the pr More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 20, 2008

Erik rated it:

This book is so good that as I was reading it, I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be reading it. I've not been able to like much of anything else Rushdie has written, but this one sang to me like few books have. And it's not for nothing that of all the books that have won the Booker, this was voted the best of the Bookers. One of my favorite quotations in the book went something like this: "In order to understand just one human life, you sometimes have to swallow the entire world." More...

5 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2008

Mark rated it:

The winner of the Booker of Booker Awards (voted the best Booker award winner from the last 25 years) this book is considered Rushdie's masterpiece. Following the life of a boy who was born on the stroke of midnight on the day India formally gained its independence from Great Britain, the boy's life and the growth of the new nation twist and turn together through 31 years. In sort of a Forrest Gump type plot line (or perhaps Forrest Gump has a Midnight's Children type plot line) major events in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 22, 2011

Andrew rated it:

Feeling in need of some quality reading about three months ago I thought to myself, ‘ I know, I should try a Booker prize winner. I’ve never read one before and they are meant to be the best of the best.’ Even better I found out that there was a ‘Booker of Bookers’ winner too, which of course was this novel. So I got it.

What I got was a book that you probably need a degree in English Literature to fully appreciate. Mr. Rushdie is certainly a man who enjoys his words. Not necessarily More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

Reading Rushdie's Midnight's Children is like listening to someone else's long-winded, rambling re-telling of a dream they had. And like all people who describe their dreams -- especially those who do so long past the point where their listeners can believably fake interest or patience -- Rushdie is inherently selfish in the way he chose to write this book. Midnight's Children is one of those novels that are reader-neutral or even reader-antagonistic -- they seem to have been written for the s More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 02, 2011

Teresa rated it:

Someone I know compared this novel to Gunter Grass's "The Tin Drum;" and though I didn't think of the parallel, I do agree. In both there's an overwhelming sense of absurdity in the world, a world that both main characters are trying to make sense of, neither understanding that it's impossible to make sense of the senseless acts that constitute what was done to innocent people in the name of what was supposedly best for the country. With his character of Saleem, the political is made p More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2007

Caroline rated it:

While many people believe this book to be one of, if not the ultimate, examples of magical realism (perhaps only second to Marquez) I found it to be an interesting hybrid because Rushdie drives the narrative hard into the facts of Indian/Pakistani history. Subsequently Rushdie ascertains that what is accepted as historical fact is not the ultimate "truth" but rather the unknown, the underground rivers, is always much more complex then what grows on the surface.

Rushdie's w More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 27, 2009

Julie rated it:

This book was REALLY hard to get through. I kept stopping and starting. It reads like magical realism and is about the birth of independent India. The life story of the main character parallels that of the new republic. lots of cool details about kashmir, india and pakistan. I liked the historical references a lot even if the story was a bit hard to follow. Feels like I need to read it twice or something.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2008

Katie rated it:

I've read this one a couple of times (I almost never re-read books). Even if you don't read the whole thing, next time you're in a bookstore pick it up and just read the first page. Or better yet, have a friend read the first page out loud to you. Rushdie's prose is so carefully crafted. Does he write as slowly as a poet, or does it just come out of his head this way? Astounding. The story itself meanders a bit, perhaps is broader than it needs to be, but my goodness it's beautiful and I l More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Bill rated it:

Rushdie's masterpiece. The one I recommend to everyone. Has all of Rushdie's best elements--the fantastical imagination, the lively wordplay, the opening that grabs you on page one. But unlike with most of his books, here Rushdie maintains discipline over his narrative all the way through. This novel is a sprawling epic fashioned as an allegory for the birth and partition of India. Rushdie's aching love for his homeland is palpable throughout, so much so that even an ignorant Westerner who h More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 10, 2008

Jason rated it:

As engaging as it is brilliant. I had never gotten around to reading anything by Salman Rushdie and decided to start with this. Wow. This book is big (topping 530 pages of densely packed prose), but it is difficult to put down. Weaving the tale of India's modern history into a new fairy tale, Rushdie has captured the spirit of the times so wholly and so truly it is almost an alternate history. There is great reason this book won the Booker prize and the Booker of Bookers (the best of the best of More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 06, 2011

Ron added it

Reviewing such a book is quite a challenge, not only because it has already been so universally well received, but because it encompasses such a huge array of themes and motifs and is so dense in its writing style. It is the life story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence. Through his own life, the story of the sub-continent early independent life is described. But Saleem discovers more of himself, that by the timing of his birth he has certain abil More...

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Jan 19, 2009

Leslie rated it:

I read this book while I was traveling through India, which made it infinitely relevant to me. It is written as an allegory about the time of India independence from the British in 1947 and the birth of a boy named Saleem Sinai at the exact same time as the birth of the new nation. The book links the two together and tells of things happening to Saleem in order to tell what was happening to India.

Not only does the book talk about historic events and political maneuverings, but it also More...

1 comment like

Jan 14, 2009

Sarah rated it:

I have mixed feelings about this book. The style is a bit cumbersome, but it works. It draws you in to the narrator. It helps to show who he is. He's just awfully verbose about it. The narrator is also the subject of the story. It goes in and out of past and present tense as he is telling his lover about his fantastical past, starting with the unusual courtship of his grandparents. Saleem (the subject of the story) was born at midnight exactly on the day of India's independence and his li More...

1 comment like

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