Midnight's Children
Reviews
** spoiler alert ** Really fascinating. The book contains so much that I almost wish there was some sort of companion material to go along with it. In the afterword the author talks about how anyone from India could’ve written the story but people not from India think it’s entirely unique, I fully felt that. While at times the story seems to meander almost too much to be able to be followed, especially when listening to it on audiobook, it was worth it to be able to experience the full story
tough read so hard to get thru lol so many adjectives and did not find the story interesting
4.5
Oh gosh, I remember randomly choosing to read this book back in high school for a video project and finding out that it was one of the most bat-crazy books I've read as of then, haha.
Blessed are people with big noses
I feel less like having read a book and more like having witnessed a historical event. Masterful magical realist storytelling; circular time; a lexicon that is as evocative as it is disorienting to readers innocent of Indian English; a puzzling fidelity to inelegant topoi that recall the absurdity and helplessness inherent in being at once embodied and enculturated beings; a feeling that there is deep truth in this fictional account.
Made me think of Red Sorghum by Mo Yan and Candide by Voltaire
Loved the voice in this, overall—especially when it becomes clear Why it is the way it is. Fantastic concept and a wonderful way to consume a fairly historical text. Sure, it’s augmented with the fantasy element, in which our main character is ostensibly telepathic and those like him, born at Midnight at the moment when India becomes a country, also have powers. Their journey parallels a burgeoning country taking its first steps, it’s adolescence, etc.; It’s intelligent and witty and well executed—as long as you like the voice, which is rapid fire and full of vivid details, only some of which ever go beyond painting a scene level of importance. It can feel meandering… but the meandering makes sense, once you have the full context. Still, people who abandon it early on due to that, I totally understand. I would say give it a go on audio though. I started with the book and then started alternating and the narration is so good that once you get it in your head, and it supplants your own voice while reading the text, I think it really helps you get through it. And probably made it a lot more entertaining. It didn’t quite bring it home, for me. It does a lot of work building it up but the ending feels a lot more mundane and a bit of a let down, despite it feeling like an ending that completely makes sense for the book.
My favorite Rushdie novel, read years ago.
midnight’s children is packed full of life. each paragraph introduces a multitude of characters, places, and events, each with their own backstory. rushdie creates a sense of sonder for the complex lives of millions indians. “there are as many versions of india as indians” (308). his narration feels like a movie, cutting between shots of many lives and plots. I found the high concentration of life to be simultaneously impressive and overwhelming. in fact i often zoned out during entire pages only to realize we had moved to a whole different place and time. it is not an easy read, but it is an impressive one. “to understand just one life, you have to swallow the world” (121). rushdie explores the line between fact and fiction, history and story, through the eyes of the protagonist saleem, a flawed but lovable lead. saleem seems to be victim to protagonist syndrome (apt due to his role as protagonist). he begins the story under the impression that everything in history has happened because of him, but as the novel progresses he begins to realize his insignificance in the grand scale of time. rushdie continues to blur the lines fantasy and reality by weaving metaphors into his writing, ex. “impregnating food with emotion” (378) and growing a house from an umbilical cord (354). this leans into the idea of the blurry boundary between magical realism and delusion. he constructs the philosophical frame of snakes and ladders to explain the constant flux of life, but reminds us that “snakes can lead to triumph just as ladders can be descended” (161). the biggest indicator of rushdie style is his utter hate of commas. for real, this man chooses to ignore their existence. but i suppose something must be left out when you take a whole continent and jam it into 533 pages.
Keeps you spell-bound!
Midnight's Children served as my introduction to India and Pakistan in literature and I'm glad it did. I've read a couple reviews and I just want to reiterate the novel is more historical than fantastical but it is the most dense piece of magical realism I've read. It is an informative tome of Indian history, I cherished every word. The reading experience is entirely unique. It's an explosion of all these different spices going off inside your mouth and I can see why people think it's overwhelming if you don't concentrate. But if you do give the novel the time and attention it deserves, you taste and appreciate every single one.
I've completed the short list for the Best of the Booker. Midnight's Children has my vote (though I think had I really been able to vote for Best of the Booker on my own terms, I would have gone for Remains of the Day or Possession). I didn't think I was going to enjoy Midnight's Children as much as I did. About four years ago I started the book, and while I really enjoyed the first 150 pages or so, I got bogged down in the detailed (and, to me, erudite)political history that overwhelms the last 400 pages. I never finished it. Since then I have learned more about India's recent history and more about Islam and Hinduism. While it was still difficult at times to follow how the abstract portions of the book fit with the political history, having basic knowledge of India's history for hte last half of the 20th century made it much more enjoyable--a true pleasure, in fact. The history informs the reading of the book--and the book illuminates the history. Both are fascinating, and important. I definitely recommend even Wikipedia to fill in the gaps of knowledge and to clarify some of the facts about the characters (I never would have guessed that Indira Ghandi really did have hair style that made her hair look black on one side and white on the other! Thanks Wikipedia!). It's not just the clever allegory that makes this a worthy read, though. Rushdie has the gift of describing mundane events as if they were mythical. The narrative devices are clever: Saleem is telling the story while he literally cracks all over, waiting to break apart; almost as if it is in real time, he goes on tangents while waiting for one of his characters to get to a doorway; a woman makes commentary about his story while he tells it, and he responds to her, sometimes contradicting what he's already said. And what really impressed me: the intricacies and rhythm of the story telling make it seem like this story has been passed down through generations. As it should, being the story of a nation. You can read my complete review on my blog, The Mookse and the Gripes.
Nearly 5 stars...maybe on a re-read. It took me about 100 pages to understand what was going on. Overall a pretty dense story, but also pretty funny at times. The last 200ish pages are phenomenal.
While I did not enjoy this work as much as The Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children is still a superb novel that challenges the reader continually. Throughout the novel, Rushdie revitalizes the ancient literature of Islam and Hinduism - Midnight's Children is highly indebted to The 1,001 Nights and the Mahabharata among others. Constant allusions to these texts enhances the mythic landscape of Rushdie's work and leaves readers with a thirst to devour these older texts.
probably more of a 3.5 - overall a great book just didn’t feel as connected to the characters as I would’ve liked.
This is one of those books that takes ages to read and has very long, quite boring sections but in the end it's quite good. What I really liked about this book was how many quotable sections there were, that always makes me love a book
When I started the book, I almost immediately thought "Oh, it's Tristram Shandy in 20th-century India," and then I remembered what a labor Sterne's book had been to get through. Still, I read the first 100 or so pages of Midnight's Children with delight. Nearly 600 pages of it proved a bit much for me, though, and though I was glad to read more about the history, and though any given shorter stretch of the book was pleasant to read, the whole big thing was a bit of a labor for me. It's a good, important book, but the return on investment for me wasn't as big as I like for a book of this size.
An incredible fantasy story in the form of an autobiography set against the trials and tribulations of pre and post independence India. A deserved winner of the Booker award. Equal parts funny and poignant Rushdie's sparkling prose and fascinating cast of characters kept me hooked until the very end.
Swimming in the sea of imagination...
RTC
WHAT A BOOK! Pure genius. It astounded me with its plain intelligence, dramatic births and obvious metaphors. It was a slow and heavy read and it will feel like an never ending book, but as you progress, as you read every page, every page I assure you it will be worth it.
Highlights
This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
Family: an overrated idea.
My parents ruined me for love.
I did not admit the possibility that their love was stronger than ugliness, stronger even than blood.
If there is a third principle, its name is childhood. But it dies; or rather, it is murdered.
Amina Sinai was reduced to glass-kissery and hand-dances.
Spied on a pain-filled scene of impotent love.
Hands lifting up, off reccine tabletop, hands hovering above three fives, beginning the strangest of dances, rising, falling, circling one another, weaving in and out between each other, hands longing for touch, hands outstretching tensing quivering demanding to be—but always at last jerking back, fingertips avoiding fingertips...feet advancing towards feet, faces tumbling softly towards faces, but jerking away all of a sudden in a cruel censor’s cut
Having been certain of myself for the first time in my life, I was plunged into a green, glass-cloudy world filled with cutting edges, a world in which I could no longer tell the people who mattered most about the goings-on inside my head
India, the new myth—a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.
Time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay’s electric power supply.
Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.
Hell is other people’s fantasies: every saga requires at least one descent into Jahannum, and I followed Picture Singh into the inky negritude of the Club, holding an infant son in my arms.
L’enfer, c'est les autres
He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again;
She had turned bright blue, Krishna-blue, blue as Jesus, the blue of Kashmiri sky, which sometimes leaks into eyes;
under the joint batterings of my uncle and aunt, my cousins had by now been beaten into so thorough a pulp that I am unable to recall their number, sexes, proportions or features; their personalities, of course, had long since ceased to exist.
‘Pol’gize,’ Resham said toothlessly and fled;
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particulary exceptional in this matter; each ‘I’, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.
I (or he) accepted the fate which was my repayment for love, and sat uncomplaining under a chinar tree; that, emptied of history, the buddha learned the arts of submission, and did only what was required of him. To sum up: I became a citizen of Pakistan.
in eight days, All-India Radio massacred the Pakistan Army down to, and considerably beyond, the last man.
she was looking forward to the empty oblivion of nostalgia and the English winter when the war came and settled all our problems.
in the breeze of that insane night he attempted to undo all the knots which not even Mary Pereira’s confession had succeeded in untying; but even as he spoke he could hear his words sounding hollow, and realized that although what he was saying was the literal truth, there were other truths which had become more important because they had been sanctified by time;
Factual vs. narrative truth
no city which locks women away is ever short of whores.
Long before the American commentator Herbert Feldman came to Karachi to deplore the existence of a dozen aerated waters in a city which had only three suppliers of bottled milk, I could sit blindfolded and tell Pakola from Hoffman’s Mission, Citra Cola from Fanta.