Okay. So. I was all ready to trash this book after, well, most of it. It is too cute by half. A dog named bear! A bear named dog! Like, shut up! I don't know. I really was finding it more silly and self-regarding than profound. And really, I think that is probably the right conclusion, ultimately. Especially as it enrages me when Rushdie reheats his old books to write a worse version of them. Like, why does he do this? I suppose this is why I am not a fiction writer. It seems like a tough gig. But it did annoy me in that I think doing a half-baked rehash of Haroun and the Sea of Stories somehow takes away from that book, which is a fairly fantastic little gem of a thing. That was a good book, Rushdie! Don't tread on its coattails! Anyway.

However. The themes of this book maybe resonated a lot with my life right now. Hi, goodreads random people! My maternal grandfather is ailing badly, and I do spend a not insignificant amount of time thinking about my own father's age and health. So these themes of wanting to find some supernatural way of saving us all from mortality and death, and especially your beloved but aging father. Well. It maybe made me cry on the lightrail on the way to work a few times. Good times! Anyway. I can't really recommend this book, as I found it objectively cloying and frustrating, but the last fifty pages did manage to sucker me in.

Edit: This was a quote that I liked. So I'm going to throw it up here.

"What an idea. Life is not a drip. Life is a flame. What do you imagine the sun is made of? Raindrops? I don't think so. Life is not wet, young man. Life burns."