book data
1275 ratings, 3.28 average rating, 112 reviews
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published
August 31st 2002
(first published 2001)
by Random House Inc.
binding
Paperback, 259 pages
isbn
0375759603
(isbn13: 9780375759604)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1718)
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avg 3.28
Read in September, 2006
recommends it for:
not even my own worst enemy
An irredeemable piece of garbage. Sloppy and uninteresting, filled with trite observations and vapid, transparent characters bumbling around in a lame social satire that amounts to nothing deeper or insightful than whatever you and your friends might say about celebrity culture while watching "Entertainment Tonight". For instance: "Celebrity's are stupid. There are more important things in the world." Hey, you're Salman Rushdie!
Even Rushdie's lauded language can't get hi...more
Even Rushdie's lauded language can't get hi...more
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Read in January, 2002
I read this a while back, and I did not love it the way I have loved Rushdie's other work. Perhaps it's brilliant, but I just don't get it.
First, there was the autobiography of a dirty middle-aged man aspect. It turns out much of the book was semi-factual, and Rushdie really did leave his loyal wife who stuck by him through his exile and hiding for a hot young thing (with a scar on her arm - sheesh, we're pushing "semi-autobiographical" here). Well, good for you, but don't act like...more
First, there was the autobiography of a dirty middle-aged man aspect. It turns out much of the book was semi-factual, and Rushdie really did leave his loyal wife who stuck by him through his exile and hiding for a hot young thing (with a scar on her arm - sheesh, we're pushing "semi-autobiographical" here). Well, good for you, but don't act like...more
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Not his finest. Rushdie's distinctive storytelling voice, which I enjoy so much in novels like SATANIC VERSES and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, is eclipsed by a self-conscious anxiety to prove familiarity with American culture. Malik Solanka's, and probably author Rushdie's, view of New York City is limited to the privileged neighborhood he frequents - and the understanding of American culture feels compressed, a digest of America via CNN and the Entertainment Channel. Intellectually, we are being fed fa...more
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This lacked the magic of the other Rushdies I've read. His work continues to annoy and amuse, alternately. The whole Gush/Bore thing I found smug, completely unfunny, and too obnoxiously pleased with its own cleverness. The same went with Asmaan's dialogue (i.e. "big stool" for school. Not funny or clever, really). I was surprised to think that Rushdie didn't have complete control over the child's voice, although I did like Malik and Asmaan's reunion at the end of the book. I als...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in October, 2007
This book contained a veritable surfeit of words I've never heard before, and I've read A LOT of books. Words like cicatrice, simulacrum, sartorial, pugilism, droit de seigneur, afflatus, lebensraum, benison, quiff, homunculus...the list goes on. Yikes. If you like having a dictionary handy and reading very heavy books, then you'll love this one. I admit the storyline was really interesting, but he could have gotten his point across using much less high-brow verbiage.
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Just finishing my second read... While it starts slowly, this is a wonderful book... Rushdie is extraordinary at writing about a specific place and time, and the place and time of this novel--the September 10th United States--is a fascinating one.
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Everything I've heard about this one is terrible. That being said, I got it for $3.95 in first-edition hardback at a Flying J's of all places. I guess those truckers like to get their late Rushdie on while they're gassing up?
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13 comments
there were several points in this book where i literally had to set the book down and think... really think... about the implications of the characters actions, language, conflicts. wonderful, but slow moving and very heavy.
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Read in October, 2008
I was really surprised by this book, maybe because I don't remember hearing much about it when it came out. I love Rushdie, Midnight's Children is my favorite novel, his style can be so tight and humorous at the same time. Anyways, this book had a lot of the same balance as On Beauty, with swift critiques that aren't dwelled on for too long, and occur as asides from a character's perspective. I loved Fury. If I ever teach a class on American 20th century history, I would definitely want to i...more
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Authorial control in works of fiction is a curious thing. If an author exerts too much control over their writing, the story usually remains mired in the constructed, overly-reasoned, essentially static world of authorial ideology and intention: the characters never wake up, look around, and start doing the sorts of mad, wonderful, unplanned-for things that make great literature speak powerfully about the human condition. On the other hand, if the author has too little control over their narrati...more
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“Life is fury, he’s though. Fury – sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal – drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover… this is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise – the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of crea...more
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Malik Solanka is mad. Not just irritated or cranky, but filled with fury, and not just his own fury, but the everyman fury that characterises his age. At 55, the Indian born, NY dwelling protagonist of Rushdie's latest novel Fury, has the kind of rage which causes him to stand with a knife over the sleeping bodies of his wife and son, scream in public, and slip between the red heat of anger to blackouts which leave him questioning his sanity and public safety. His anger is also part of the broa...more
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Read in January, 2008
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Read in November, 2008
This was my first, but not last Rushdie exploration. Of course, the man is a genius, so I look forward to delving into his more advanced and... well, let's say it, good literature. This book was fine. It was funny. There were some very good points to it. But really, it was frankly a pile of pop culture references, genre-swapping, and freaky plot twists. By freaky, I mean completely unbelievable. It screamed, "autobiographical!" and I really couldn't shake that. Not one to necessarily b...more
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Read in July, 2007
this should go on the shelf of "recent fiction that i've invested time in and not regretted the investment." there aren't many books on that shelf, oddly enough.
this book is probably the best rushdie i've read to date. of course, i have a serious weakness for new york settings, intense introspection and extended metaphor, so you'll have to take this tentative endorsement with a grain of salt.
i recommend reading this book on a nice lazy sunday afternoon when you've a lot of...more
this book is probably the best rushdie i've read to date. of course, i have a serious weakness for new york settings, intense introspection and extended metaphor, so you'll have to take this tentative endorsement with a grain of salt.
i recommend reading this book on a nice lazy sunday afternoon when you've a lot of...more
Read in January, 2007
I read Satanic Versus when I was in the 7th grade. A friend who later committed suicide, had a copy. I for some reason thought the book was going to be about sex, I had a Lolita like obsession with the book, because why else would some people from Iran would want to kill this guy. It only made sense, based on the puritan laws of this country, that this book must either be about sex or swearing.
It was neither, and I was disappointed.
The Fury, is also kind of lame. I don't know what i...more
It was neither, and I was disappointed.
The Fury, is also kind of lame. I don't know what i...more
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The title also serves as an adequate description of the novel's tone. Set in NYC (where Rushdie had just moved after his 9 years under constant protection in London), Rushdie absolutely blasts the New York rich and their lifestyle. The problem is that the novel almost never varies this tone; fury consumes the novelist at least as much as his protagonist, and the end result is almost boring for lack of variety. Not one of Rushdie's finer moments.
This novel intrigues me, though, because it ...more
This novel intrigues me, though, because it ...more
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Read in March, 2008
It's not news that Rushdie is a brilliant god of prose, but he's just so darn funny at the same time. Reading this made me remember why I studied literature--and why I completely loved the study of it--apparently it was so that years later, I could get what Mr Rushdie was talking about some of the time.
I didn't give it four stars though because Rushdie's personal life is so patently on display in the work--not that it's a bad thing--just that he's now divorced and the beautiful goddess/fema...more
I didn't give it four stars though because Rushdie's personal life is so patently on display in the work--not that it's a bad thing--just that he's now divorced and the beautiful goddess/fema...more
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The worst and most lazily executed of Rushdie's fiction. Usually even when he's not that great his narrative acrobatics are enough to keep me engaged and at the very least entertained (as opposed to at his best when he transforms me into quivering blubber at the horror and beauty of the world he reflects), but it feels like he gave up, or maybe decided to start writing a completely different book about 1/2 way through. If he was not already an established writer and celebrity I find it hard to...more
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Read in December, 2007
This was certainly not the book I was expecting from Salman Rushdie. It was extremely naked in its emotions and I found it wonderfully revealing.
A man abandons his life in his mid-50s because he can't control the rage inside himself and flees across the ocean to lose himself in New York. The actions of the book are so far less important, in my estimation, than the exploration of the emotion of fury, its many manifestations, and how one man goes about recognizing and addressing them.
But ...more
A man abandons his life in his mid-50s because he can't control the rage inside himself and flees across the ocean to lose himself in New York. The actions of the book are so far less important, in my estimation, than the exploration of the emotion of fury, its many manifestations, and how one man goes about recognizing and addressing them.
But ...more
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