For a book so widely extolled in reviews, I found it underwhelming in terms of characterization and save a few paragraphs of vintage Rushdie, nothing in the fabulized retelling of history was moving or transformative. The bar is so low for men seeking to write feminist stories that Rushdie can get away with making the protagonist magical/fantastical even but despite that, the lead character is, after the first pages, wooden, inscrutable, and uninteresting. What’s uncanny is, of course, the attack on him afterwards in which R lost an eye like the main character in VC who is blinded. But that doesn’t redeem the work, coming as it does from the man that wrote TSV and TMLS. What did you guys think?
by Macguffawin