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What Members Thought
Intriguing characters, a magical story, and I found myself racing to finish it despite its density.
Brilliant but also sadly self-indulgent.
There is much about this book that I loved, not least the intense beauty, colour and humour of his descriptions of post-Independence India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The personification of the newly independent sub-continent with all its hopes, dreams and challenges into a group of almost magically gifted but also variously disadvantaged newborn children is a wonderful way to tell the story of the nations. The narrator, who is the gel that brings together ...more
There is much about this book that I loved, not least the intense beauty, colour and humour of his descriptions of post-Independence India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The personification of the newly independent sub-continent with all its hopes, dreams and challenges into a group of almost magically gifted but also variously disadvantaged newborn children is a wonderful way to tell the story of the nations. The narrator, who is the gel that brings together ...more
It's a scintillating, rich piece of writing, for sure. It just branches out into so many directions using so many styles, bouncing and reflecting between them. Historical and political events transmute freely and exuberantly into personal identity and vice versa. It's much less claustrophobic and crazed than the Satanic Verses, this definitely shares the same playful mixing of the mystical and the mundane, but it seems much less dark, and even the bleakest parts feel thrillingly alive. He just h
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Started writing a raving review of this book and for whatever reason Goodreads shut down the screen and I was bounced out. I wasn’t using “bad words” — just waxing rhapsodic as they say, about this incredible book. Rushdie’s masterwork. I’m not going to rewrite everything. Others say it better than I. Just read it. Read it.
To me, this book is overrated. It is often likened to "One Hundred Years of Solitude," but I found that it paled in comparison. There is a magic to "One Hundred Years of Solitude," beyond the magical realism, in the way the stories are constructed and woven together that does not exist in "Midnight's Children." I actually found large portions of this novel to be rather boring with only an interesting episode thrown in occasionally.
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Mar 24, 2008
Rena
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Apr 23, 2008
Derrick
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Maura
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Nadra
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Mar 17, 2009
Priya
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Apr 10, 2009
Erica
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Sep 23, 2009
John J.
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Nov 14, 2009
Sarah
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Nov 20, 2009
Patricia
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Jan 09, 2013
Katy
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Jul 30, 2013
Courtney
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