Disfruté mucho todo su desarrollo aunque hubo algunas cuestiones al final que me parecieron ya un poco apresuradas.

Before The Golden House, I'm not sure I knew what magical realism was. Maybe I'm still not quite sure, yet after getting into the rhythm of the book, I loved the manner within which Salman Rushdie wrote this tale of our times. As the novel progresses the writing gets looser, possibly more relaxed, as the reader no longer is a stranger to the characters. They are now friends and comfortable with each other's presence, allowing the pace of the story to accelerate and deepen, ultimately changing into a screenplay type of description. This allows the reader to feel the emotion of the scene and visualize the truth and consequences of the characters actions. The tragedy that unfolds in the personal lives of the Golden house are intertwined with the tragedies of life in the world from 1993 to present day. The Joker is the stand in for President Trump and posturing of hope defeated after the Obama Administration is a carried personal theme. A key character is a homeless man referred to as a "tramp", who interjects himself into the story, reminding the readers that personal choice is only part of the formula of life and it's death. Accolades are due to the author for seamlessly rolling into this story current issues and the real truth they represent. Guns, immigration, wealth, gender identity, autism, mental health, procreation, terrorism, even fire. It's all there for the reader to chew on and consider. This will undoubtedly be one of my favorite books because of the depth of the material presented. As a reader, I was challenged with all of the movie, literary and fine art references as well as the tight style of writing within which the story starts out. I admit, I had to reread several sections as skimming through is not permitted for full understanding. By the end of the story though, I am not ready to let go of what have become my characters. The closing scene is not lost on the reader and leaves one wondering, is this an ending of hope? Or is it simply a restart of all that began.

Kind of a generous three stars, because this was a pain in the neck to read. I was totally invested in the story, but the writing style was so annoying and overblown. I had a hard time with the ending, because I was not on board with the narrator's take on things at all. I guess if you like ornate writing and don't care about female characters and are into male entitlement, you will like this a lot more than I did.

3.5 if possible. It was engaging on and off throughout the chapters. The twists are what held me in though - fantastic

I wanted to like this more. There were a few times I almost DNF. I persisted because the family’s story drew me in. Rushdie has a way of waxing poetic on human psyche. There are a lot of intellectually packed one liners on how “we thought we were superheroes only to remove the mask and find out we were the super villain.”
As all his books, he writes on reality but often masked as fiction.
Overall I’m glad I read it.

Rushdie’s commentary on our recent political history is bitingly funny and brilliant. The ascendancy of the “green haired” Joker to the presidency is the backdrop to a Gatsby-like story of new beginnings, fabulous wealth, corruption, love, jealousy, fate, art, and all those big ideas typical of a Rushdie novel. Although the plot dragged a bit at the beginning, by the end, I was completely riveted to the story of the Golden family.

You can’t rush Rushdie. If you do, you’re missing it. I didn’t rush reading through The Golden House, but I also didn’t feel the need to. There was not too much that was pulling me back in. There is much time spent on characters, without really developing the character. These parts were used more or less as a way of introducing Rushdie’s running commentary on current events (which I did enjoy! They just didn’t make much for character or plot development).

If you removed all references to Greek and Roman mythology, literature, film, you can probably cut out a third of the book. That isn’t to say I disliked them all, only to say I got tired of reading so many of them.

I thought the narration was interesting. Rene at first acts much like Nick does in the Great Gatsby, a participant, but a distant one. He watches the “Goldens” and is mesmerized by them, yearning to learn their story. He arguably gets a bit more involved than Nick ever was able in the Great Gatsby.
And as for the Trump in the room, he makes his appearance, if only as an excuse for Rushdie attack the “fictionalized” villain that terrorizes the city, readying to terrorize us all. The characters or Trump, Clinton, and other players in the 2016 election, don’t really add anything to the plot, but allow the narrator a little time to vent his frustrations at America willingly voting for a monster to be king.

Is this book going to stand the test of time, probably not. It is all very timely, but not timeless. Even though this may not be one of my favorites of his, I am always ready to read. The way he weaves various issues, themes, motifs, etc. into his stories. I’m sure Rushdie’s thoughts on identity politics, gender politics, political correctness, censorship, etc. won’t sit well with everyone, but they are great discussions to have.

This book is exhausting. I read 100 pages and am considering myself done.

This book is The Great Gatsby of our time.

That is neither a compliment or a complaint, it's just the conclusion I came to about halfway through (in fact, from me it is more of a condemnation, as any glance at my rating of The Great Gatsby will reveal). The parallels between the two finally clicked into place. In Nick, we had our generic outside-looking-in narrator, and in René we have a very similar man; a neighbor obsessed with the affairs of the rich, shady family who moved in next door, living vicariously through them and wishing he was them, until he becomes them.

It is, also, a tragedy.

The Golden House’s strengths lie in its social commentary. The novel crawls into all the insecurities of our age, the flaws and the thought wars of the past ten years, and savagely exposes them. There are long rants, in Rushdie’s sometimes frustrating, sometimes sublime run-on sentences. There are page-long critiques of Trump, there are paragraphs of other characters worried about the state of political correctness, and long ruminations about identity and the self. It crams references in as if Rushdie felt like this would be his only opportunity to expose all he knows, so he created an almost impossibly intellectual character to explore his narrative in order to cram in as many rants as would alleviate the stress of being a writer in our time. It was somehow satisfying, seeing these anxieties written in such a prolific way.

The novel’s faults lie in its plot, at once contrived and too-tragic, maudlin and unbelievable. The story is mired in foreshadowing and cliche. The story, itself, is probably commentary on something, but gosh did I want some emotional core to hang on to, and I never quite found it, and I’m not sure it was given. Like in Gatsby, I was expected to feel sympathy for the plights of the supercorruptandrich, only unlike in Gatsby, the narrator was impossibly intolerable, and the end left me feeling empty. Characters are gotten rid of in the exact order you become attached to them--by the end you are left with almost no one, except for the tertiary but poised female characters who occupied the background, and who, frankly, deserved better than they got.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a gorgeously and innovatively written book that could easily become a symbol of our age, in much the same way The Great Gatsby encapsulates the Jazz age. But that doesn’t make it a treat to read, and the more I think about it, the more exhausted I become.