Your favourite writer isn't as good as Salman Rushdie. 😍

What I love about Rushdie's other books is the mysticism. The magic. That was missing here. There were many beautiful ideas, interesting thoughts, and compelling passages, but they didn't gel. The running backstory was the Obama years, followed by the 2016 election. While I share Rushdie's contempt for trump, that part would've made more sense in essays or something. I didn't feel it added to the story. Maybe even a bit gratuitous. The main plot I guess was weakened by the side plots rather than being enhanced.

Wow. Really excellent political satire told through a dramatic story. At times a little run-on, but generally perfect, intelligent writing. I listened to the recorded version, which was read very, very well, adding to the drama. Highly recommend.

I was excited when I started this book in August, now it’s mid-October, and I am plowing through it – as in I am fast-reading/skimming because I am bored but so closed to finish. I realized that on my Kindle, my “time left in book” was turned off and then disappointed by how much was left.

Rushdie who I always like in principle but then I start reading I realize why I am still skeptical of his writing outside of “The Satanic Verses.” The writing in “The Golden House,” is bloated due to the complete fullness of elitism, pop culture and literature references that people with Masters and Doctorates or who are autodidactic will know. I am surprised that only a few references I have had to stop and look up. Rushdie mentions Stephen Colbert just after a sentence referencing P.G. Wodehouse.

“The Golden House,” is a Trumpian, Gatsbyian and Mythican story. It feels like Rushdie threw everything into this account including the kitchen sink and that is where it gets bogs down. Every sentence could be majestic by itself, and then he continues long paragraphs to which the writing lost in the magnitude of the 400 pages.

The story is about a family with the patriarch deciding to relocate to NYC and change their names to Roman gods for himself and his three sons. About the lies, fables, and truth they choose to tell. Joseph Campbell would be proud of the anti-hero arch that happens. Fitzgerald, if he would be alive today would either love or hate the work compared to his tightly written story (with is flaws). Fitzgerald would be happy with just being recognized.

As Rushdie is the author, I can't tell if he is writing in the moment because it feels like it or that he is writing about himself and about his time in America in the past twenty years. I can’t tell where the narrator because the author or the author becomes the narrator. Is he looking at his life or the life of Democracy to its death, much like Rome? I don't know.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this ARC.

This book was brilliant, such an amazing commentary of the United States' political situation right now.

Though I love Salman Rushdie's creativity and his twists, I do not like his writing style. There is way to much exposition. The main character describes everything rather than having actual action. It just wasn't my favorite.

54: The Golden House by Salman Rushdie...one of four new hardcovers I splurged on one day recently, having listened to him speak briefly of this newest novel of his on public radio. I've enjoyed his writing in the past, and I was not disappointed by this read. I really enjoyed the timeliness of this contemporary novel, presenting a story that was extremely current, right through its addressing of the recent Presidential campaigns, the election, the outcome, the response. And I enjoyed the narrative voice, which at times prompted me to hear Garrison Keillor's, commenting objectively on the state of things in a situation, a list, following that, of details and facts to support it. I further enjoyed the multiple layers of the story and its many motifs--characters' questionably ambiguous histories, tragedy and its related allusions, filmmaking, transgender/identity issues--to create a valuable complexity and intertwining of stories and their value overall. I especially appreciated the narrator making a film all the while, but also, as I saw it, being filmed, as he is as much a part of the story as he is its teller. At times, the book plodded, but some of the very best do! I think many of you will enjoy this one.

Wonderful writing: challenging, informative, densely detailed and intimate. Great contemporary reflective device.