Midnight’s Children in Reading List Completists

Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, post-modern, indian-subcontinent, indian-20th-c, favorites, booker-winners, novels

This is my absolute favourite Rushdie novel. Its background of the Partition of India and Pakistan after the disastrous and cowardly retreat of the British occupiers and the ensuing Emergency under Indira Ghandi provides a breathtaking tableau for Rushdie's narrative. His narrator is completely unreliable and that is what makes the story so fascinating. I lend this book out so many times after talking about it so much (and never got my paperback copy returned) that I had to buy a hardcover that ...more

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Mar 10, 2022 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: completist-book-club, audio, magical-realism, 2021, hoopla, historical-fiction

I got a comment on this review today hinting at the fact that it is taking me months to finish the last 5% and that sounds like a bad deal . . . so, I figured it is about time I finally write my review. I did finish this book back in October, but I have not been all that inspired to write a review. That is partially a product of a year+ long book slump I have been going through. It is also partially because this was a very big book with lots to absorb and, because I was slumping, I am not really I got a comment on this review today hinting at the fact that it is taking me months to finish the last 5% and that sounds like a bad deal . . . so, I figured it is about time I finally write my review. I did finish this book back in October, but I have not been all that inspired to write a review. That is partially a product of a year+ long book slump I have been going through. It is also partially because this was a very big book with lots to absorb and, because I was slumping, I am not really sure I can do it justice. So, you may want to take my review of this with a grain of salt as I am not sure it would reflect my experience with it during a better year.

Overall – I would give this book 3.5 to 4 stars.

I don’t really know a lot about the history of India, so it was interesting to learn about mid-20th Century India through this book. I cannot say that I know if Rushdie did a good job of being historically accurate – but, it sure feels like he did and I have not seen any complaints hinting at the contrary.

There was a lot of magical realism and mysticism in the story. In general – I tend to really like magical realism. There are a few authors who use magical realism a lot that do not click with me - the main one that comes to mind is Gabriel García Márquez. And, having read One Hundred Years of Solitude recently, Midnight’s Children had a very similar feeling to it. In fact, I would not be surprised if I were to hear that Rushdie was trying to write this book in the same vein. However, and not that I can quantify it in any particular way, I liked Midnight’s Children more than Solitude . . . maybe I just found it more accessible?

Should you read this book?

If you are working your way through the classics and are ready for an epic and complex book – definitely!

If you are not ready for something heavy, extensive, a bit odd, and requiring focused thought, you may want to wait. I go back to the fact that I read this for a book club during a slump – if it was not for that, I think I would have stopped and saved this until my head was in a better and more focused place.
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Mar 24, 2017 Jason rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own, favorites

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems--but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

This exceptionally lauded, magical tour-de-force needs not my humble opinions, it already has the praise of countless clever wordsmiths and the critiques of many superior minds, but the laying down of my thoughts is none the less my task and I shall do so with haste to meet the end. Rushdie's writing is cy Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems--but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

This exceptionally lauded, magical tour-de-force needs not my humble opinions, it already has the praise of countless clever wordsmiths and the critiques of many superior minds, but the laying down of my thoughts is none the less my task and I shall do so with haste to meet the end. Rushdie's writing is cyclical and beautiful, it's beat forces your mind to match it's stolid and whimsical pace; a story that is organic yet maintains a deliberateness that allows you to take a breathe and rest your eyes, knowing that while the destination is not fully known the conductor will deliver you there at a time of their choosing and by circuitous routes.

I am not completely sure where to start, how to approach the task I have undertaken, still smitten with the beauty of this book and the ugliness it contains, I almost dare not pick at it for fear it will vanish like a man in a basket crossing political barriers, or crumble in my mind like so much eaten away bone matter. Let me just try to sum up what kind of book this is - as anyone will know, it is a superb (perhaps the superb) example of magic realism, it is also a multi-generational family epic and the epic of India herself. This book is a coming-of-age, again of a man, but also of a nation. This book is about the magic a place and people can hold, breed, and live; it is also about how that magic can be stolen, ripped away, squandered - birth and death, hope and fear. This is a tale of Kashmiri blue eyes, cucumbers, pickles, knees and noses, hands that dance, and perforated sheets. There are diamonds and rubies, snakes and ladders, mothers and fathers; there are tetrapods, as well as, center partings. I fear I am still just circling, failing to describe this incredible story of India and of Saleem Sinai, if I tried to explain you wouldn't believe, but if you read you will doubt your present, but accept his past.

Perhaps nonsensical rambling is all I can give you... I was not born at a time of magic. As far as I know my life is my own, not burdened with ties to that of my homeland. I have no special gifts bestowed upon me and thus I can not use them to entrance you in a tale, but Salman does, and Saleem does, so quick, depart this circling drain of hints and glimpses, enter the world of children born at midnight where destiny rules over reason, bends it, morphs it, contorts it into a likeable if not always attractive and enviable form. Go be witness to the alpha and omega. Go see what silver spittoons have to offer and how the dead are burdened by the sins of the living. Go now, to the land of green chutneys and saffron beards. Do not be weary, this a tale that contains pain and suffering true, but it is not suffocated by it, it lives... it will live on in your own mind long after you reach the close. ...more

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Dec 10, 2021 Liane rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: x-2021

Ugh. I hated this. Crass, ugly, absurd and way too dang long. Listened to the first third as an audiobook, then split the difference reading and listening intermittently.

Having read some other reviews, I have to consider if listening to the audiobook wholly decreased my perception of this book. What I would have preferred not to read in excruciating detail, I could have skimmed, which is more difficult to accomplish with an audiobook. By the time I got the paper copy and began reading, I had cer ...more

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Jan 30, 2020 Peter Adamson rated it it was ok

Boy—was this book a slog to get through! I’m not entirely sure why. Rushdie is undoubtedly a good storyteller. I guess I never cared enough about any of the characters to keep up with all the shifts, name changes, and cutesy things. I almost didn’t finish it.

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