The Golden House by Salman Rushdie is full of stories. There is never just one story to tell. One situation to describe. One family to recognize. Nero Golden comes to America with his three adult sons to establish a new life. Simple? Salman Rushdie’s characters stream through each other’s lives trying not to get lost in the currents and eddies of political strife, underworld machinations, cultural and gender shifting while adapting to identity, power, and greed to find and accept with an open hand, hope and genuine love. The narrator, one René Unterlinden, while writing a movie, takes from Roman mythology, Greek tragedy to the modern day Joker of the comic-book world. No super heroes to save the day but many anti-heroes litter the pages. An oft repeated question was whether a good man could be a bad man and could a bad man be a good man could appear to be the nub of the story.
My book group yesterday discussed the enormous number of words and ideas that were skillfully crafted by Salman Rushdie. Some of us enjoyed this novel, some of us were just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail that went into this work. I had not finished the book by time for book group so, while I had the latter opinion of feeling overwhelmed, I did not feel I could contribute much to the discussion. This morning, I finished The Golden House and found all the loose ends tied up as neatly as possible given the nature of the story. I say as neatly as possible given the very human situations. There is a great sense of reality to this book which, I must admit, engendered a sense of discomfort as much of this was too close to the state of the world today.
Will I read this book again? A book with this amount of detail will be reserved for its own time and place.
“This is what I am not: I am not one thing. I contain multitudes.”
~ Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
Title: The Golden House
Copyright: 2017
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Canada
Format: Novel
ISBN: 978-0-7352-7356-6
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7352-7358-0
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