I was super excited when i received this book, you can all guess 'WHY' that might be!! I was totally disappointed, and only finished it on a hope that it will get better.....It didn't!I do know it has mixed reviews but story wasn't our type at all.

Did not finish. This sounded like a winner: from Salman Rushdie, winner of the Booker of Bookers for Midnight’s Children and set in New York with a loose allegory on Trump. I got about two-thirds of the way through it, and finding that I was not getting the momentum that some readers reported halfway through, I moved on to better things. The story is told from the perspective of a twenty-something American man who becomes intrigued (to say the least) with a family from an initially unnamed country that moves into his affluent neighborhood. The widowed patriarch is Nero Golden and his three sons are Petronius, Lucius Apuleius, and Dionysus. Nero is meant to be the Trump allegory, which you can tell because sometimes he says things like, “On the upper floors I can get a terrific deal . . . So, a great deal. The best deal in town.” My main problem with this novel was voice. I got bogged down in a conversation between the narrator and Nero about guns that didn’t indicate the speakers, and I couldn’t tell from their voice who was who. Both of them sounded like the elderly foreigner. I quit not long after that.

There were beautiful nuggets in Rushdie’s prose, to wit:

Life and death are both meaningless. They happen or don’t happen for reasons that have not weight, from which you learn nothing. There is no wisdom in the world. We are all fortune’s fools. Here is the earth and it is so beautiful and we are so lucky to be here with one another and we are so stupid and what happens to us is so stupid and we don’t deserve our stupid luck.

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.

I really wanted to like this novel but I have to be honest: I did not enjoy it at all. It was very difficult to get through and I almost gave up multiple times. It starts off in a very boring way with nothing going on. That doesn't stop the narrator from narrating everything in a very melodramatic way, which serves no purpose whatsoever. I really did not like the narrator at all; his voice tried to hard to mark its importance and there were just too many pop culture references for my liking. It's clear that the author is a master in the art of making connections; his comparisons between the politics in the States and the happenings in the Golden family were apt and brilliant. However, getting to these moments was a challenge and it stopped impressing me after a time because of the way the author presented it. Maybe I'm not intelligent enough to appreciate the nuances and the arguments the author is trying to make ... but at the end of the day, I didn't enjoy reading this story. Overall, this was not the greatest novel I've read.... but I think I will give the author another chance to wow me!

A masterfully told tale of crime, passion, familial ties, immigration, and the classic battle of good versus evil. At the center of this novel is the disfunctional Golden family: the larger-than-life expatriated father Nero and his three sons, the agorophobic Petya, the haunted artist Apu, and the youngest, D, struggling against the ties of his birth gender. Rushdie mimics Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway in an arguably even more effective way, wherein the speaker ("call me René") is observing the Golden family from the outside as he plans to write and produce a film about their lives, yet he himself is dragged into drama, taking actions that place him firmly within the family history; he remains, however, even at the end, simply "a supporting role" wishing to be "at least for this one scene, the star." Rushdie's story is fiction, but René's is a mix: he includes "real" conversations, short scenes from his play reconstructed with the "truth" embedded in any memoir (and thus limited to the faulty thing we call memory), and moments he admits to making up to increase the drama or simply because he could not have been present during that scene. Rushdie's towering novel can seem a bit bombastic at times, but every sentence, every "supporting role," is ultimately a necessary part of this tale of good versus evil, and whether or not one figure can be both.

One of my favorite scenes in Bridget Jones Diary involves Salman Rushdie.
"You know, its an amazing thing, nobody has ever asked me that question."

The Golden House was my foray into Rushdie's works and it won't be my last. It's melodramatic, it's kind of boring, it's full of satire, it's a little over dramatic....it's brilliant and it's wonderful and it's perfect.

This is a very modern story: the Golden family, three sons lead by their criminal father, who, because of his criminal associations, leave their country of origin and reinvent themselves in Manhattan. They all take very fancy new names, and are eventually punished for their reinvention.

What Rushdie does so well is tie this story with the current matter of the US administration. He's made no secret of what he thinks of the current "leader" and the very significant and timely ties to the status of the U.S. and the goings on at that 'Golden" house are a powerful social commentary.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I have always wanted to read a book by Salman Rushdie and I finally got my chance! I am so excited! The story is of a rich man and his family who mysteriously move the the US. The three sons are all very different and have distinct personalities as profiled by the very subtle narrator of the story (a young filmmaker who wants to make a movie about the family). Amazing writing and plot, with so much going in the beginning as the family settles in the US when a hopeful Obama is inaugurated, how they slowly rise and then the eventual political change when "The Joker" is elected to office.... Tragic yet smart family drama as the Golden's rise and then fall from grace... Wonderful use of current cultural, literary and movie references through out the story which was not only an entertaining mystery but also a comment on our current society and culture. LOVED this book. Intellectual yet easy to read, a slow-building story told in a very insightful way. Thanks so much for the ARC NetGalley and Random House!!!

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get into this book. That just happens sometimes. It’s not a condemnation of the story or the author. It wasn’t the book for me at this time.

"The Golden House" by Salman Rushdie is truly a remarkable book. You can not read Rushdie's book as a plot driven book. It must be read slowly and read for an appreciation for the way it is written. Rushdie has a true talent for phrasing and rendering "pearls of wisdom". There is so much to this novel that I can not begin to name all the aspects of life that are portrayed. You must just believe me when I say this novel is worth reading and rereading.

I was excited to receive an ARC for THE GOLDEN HOUSE by Salman Rushdie, especially since I had not (sad to admit) read any of his earlier works despite rave reviews from colleagues. Unfortunately, I find myself agreeing with others (see Goodreads reviews) who had not read Rushdie and were puzzled at being underwhelmed by his latest work. The premise, involving modern day politics and an immigrant family, was of interest, but I found the book to be almost entirely full of description with hardly any dialogue. It did not hold my interest despite receiving starred reviews from Booklist, KIrkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

I read "Midnight's Children" in 2014 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how it was erudite, entertaining and even funny at times. I was expecting to love "The Golden House" because of my previous experience in reading Rushdie.

Oh boy, "The Golden House" was erudite but almost entirely unentertaining. The book was riddled with literary, cultural, political, geographical, and historical references in virtually every paragraph. The book was 400 pages and I think about 100 of those pages were story and the rest were references and allusions. Yes, the references and allusions were clever and there were some great political comments that made me smirk. However, it felt like the author kept abandoning the story in order to squeeze in as many references as humanly possible.

The story was about a middling scriptwriter who befriends....or at least closely observes...the new family that moved into his building complex in NYC. While I enjoyed snippets into each of the family member's lives (each of the family members had distinct personalities so it was actually interesting to follow), it never felt like the plot was going anywhere.

This is a book that I thought I was going to love so I am very disappointed that I couldn't enjoy it.

2.5 stars

I received a DRC copy in exchange for an honest review on Netgalley. I was approved by the publisher to review the book around the same time that my hold came in from the library so I ended up reading a finished copy.

When the new neighbours move in, René immediately declares them his object of study and protagonists of the film he is going to make. The Golden family are simply fascinating, the father Nero and his three sons Petya, Apu and D. Interestingly, all carry ancient Roman names even though they obviously come from India. There must be more they are hiding. Their male idyll is threatened when Vasilisa shows up, the father’s new Russian lover. When René’s parents die in an accident, the Goldens become his replacement family and he moves in with them which gives him the opportunity to study them from much closer. The more time he spends with them, the more secrets are revealed and finally, he himself becomes a part of the family secret. Yet, the past the Goldens wanted to flee from catches up and they have to pay for what they thought they could leave behind them.

Salman Rushdie is well known for his politically loaded novels which never go unnoticed. Again, his latest novel puts the finger in a wound, this time the American and the question which played a major role in the 2016 presidential election: who is a true American and what makes you and American? Apart from this, in “The Golden House” the supervillain The Joker wins the election which is not very promising for the nation.

Even though there is an obvious political message, this hides behind the family story of the Goldens. Here, unfortunately, I had expected much more. Admittedly, the four men are drawn with noteworthy features and fates and to follow their struggles after settling in the USA is far from uninteresting, but it also is not as fascinating and remarkable as I had expected. It is the chronicles of an immigration family, not less, but also not more. Their numerous secrets can create some suspense, however, much of it is too obvious to really excite.

Where Salman Rushdie can definitely score is in the side notes:
“True is such a twentieth-century concept. The question is, can I get you to believe it, can I get it repeated enough times to make it as good as true. The question is, can I lie better than the truth.“ (Pos. 3380) and
“You need to become post-factual. – Is that the same as fictional? – Fiction is élite. Nobody believes it. Post-factual is mass market, information-age, troll generated. It’s what people want. “(Pos. 3390)

These are the times we are living in. Truth is created by the ruling classes and repeated as often as necessary until the people believe it. It is even better than fiction. This should definitely make us think about our consumption of media and question the producers of the news.

I appreciate Rushdie’s capacity of formulating to the point, the masses of references to novels and films are also quite enticing, at least they show that Rushdie himself in fully immersed in the western culture, but, nevertheless, I missed something really captivating in the novel. It was somehow pleasant to read, but not as remarkable as expected.

Salmon Rushdie is an author who can entrap the reader with his story witting. A masterpiece, I highly recommend...but keep the Internet handy to research Greek philosophers and mythology, who the author refers to on many occasions.
A young student, Rene decides to make a movie about the family next door, The neighbour, Mr Golden and his three sons have escaped to America after Mrs.Golden is killed in a bombing in which he was partly responsible. Wanting out of the crime scene, his boss threatens him and lets him know he may leave but is never forgotten. Rene becomes deeply involved in the Golden family affairs, and his movie becomes part of the narrative. An intriguing story.

This is a masterful literary achievement and a great lens on contemporary American culture from the perspective of an unusual immigrant family. The Goldens—an old man named Nero and his three adult sons-- arrive in Manhattan around 2008 and take up residence in a mansion that shares a common garden park with a small neighborhood of wealthy residents. Our narrator, who calls himself Rene, is an aspiring film maker in his twenties who is still living with his parents in the same neighborhood and who becomes obsessed with the mystery and allure of the Goldens. Their story is that they simply chose to leave their life in unnamed country to create a new life in America. By ingratiating himself with the family, Rene soon learns small pieces of their hidden story, in particular that they are escaping from some disaster that included a tragic death of Nero’s wife and that Nero had some connection with gangsters. Whatever unknown crimes are waiting for him to uncover, Rene is captivated by Nero’s overall modus operandi:
" …he was, they all were, in the grip of a huge fantasy: the idea that men would not be judged by who they once were and what they had once done, if only they decided to be different."

Rene’s compulsion to figure out what makes the Golden’s tick becomes linked to his ambition to make a great movie based on their lives. A movie with parallels to “Rear Window” or “The Great Gatsby.” As he slowly becomes effectively a member of their family, he learns their secrets piece by piece. The mythic overtones are already there in their adoption of names in their new country—e.g. Nero for the tyrannical Roman emperor and one son with the name of the god Dionysus. The oldest son, Petronius (aka Peyra), is brilliant in mathematics and writing computer games but is socially clumsy and suffers from agoraphobia and an Asperger-like condition. The second son, Lucius Apuleius (Apu for short), is a “gluttonous agoraphile” who sought out the varieties of life in the city “like a young Whtiman”, became an avante garde artist, and “came to be thought of as a magic creature, an escapee from a fairy tale, though nobody could say if he was charmed or doomed”. While these two were over 40, Dionysus, who goes by “D”, is 20 years younger, a sensitive man who turns out to have gender identity issues. He loves a woman who runs the “Museum of Identity” and who pressures him to make the transgender metamorphosis, a jump he balks at and leads him to much anguish. A final key character is an elegant Russian woman of 28, Vasilisa, who picks Nero as her husband and Tsar of money and power.

Rene is writing from some point in the future, which is the reader’s contemporary time at the end of 2016. He warns us that he is an unreliable narrator:
"Maybe I am a smart camera. I record, but I’m not exactly passive. I think, I alter. Possibly I even invent. To be an imaginer, after all is very different from being a literalist."

Prospective readers might consider this set-up and become wary over whether this book is for them. Like me, maybe they doubt whether the lives of the powerful and wealthy would be compelling. Maybe through “The Sopranos” and “The Godfather” you believe you have had your fill of exploring the human side of those who struggle to live with their ill-gotten gains. But this is something different. It feels like a true portrait of America as a field of dreams and tragic disappointments, spanning the interval between the election of Obama and that of Trump. As the plot unfolds and Rene crosses the line from observer to a serious participant in the drama and unfolding tragedies in the Golden’s lives, we are embedded a lot of substantive moral choices about how we should live our lives. While being taxed to judge and figure out the characters before me on Rene’s stage, I was delightfully dizzied by all the help proffered from the wise men of history and truth wizards of our current time. Allusions abound in every paragraph—from movies and literature to songs and slogans from popular culture. Instead of cryptic references or obscure allegory that you can encounter with a Nabokov or Joyce, most of such stretches of context and framing are clear and bound well into the lively dialogue and situations of the characters. You may only have a dim conception of, say, the Greek plays of Aristophanes or the movies of Luis Bunuel, but a deftly explained and relevant reference to them is satisfactorily uplifting and edifying for me. It begins to sink in that the issues of lofty figures from Homer or Shakespeare have their counterpart in the lives of the novel’s characters and, in turn, the average reader.

The tone the narrator takes wavers between the casually intimate to mock epic in scope. I loved that variety. With a simple word or phrase—“Cut”, “Fade to black”—Rene’s narration puts a smile on my face as a collaborating camera man. I appreciated Rene’s stated ambition of transmuting the lives of “real” characters into film tropes as the reverse of Woody Allen’s play on film characters breaking out into real life in his “Purple Rose of Cairo”. Despite this kind of romping, Rushie claimed in a recent PBS interview (http://www.pbs.org/video/novelist-salman-rushdie-fgbqsi/) that his goal with the book was to convey to his readers a vision of “how things really are” and, hopefully, in the course of time to be able to evoke the reaction that “this is how things really were.” In the background of the story, Trump as a nameless candidate appears as a green-haired Joker of comic book fame. No magical realism here. During this period Rene makes money helping his lover create satirical political advertising for the other candidate, who is portrayed as Batwoman in various scenarios. Rushie emphasizes the critical need at this time for laugher, noting that he has Trump figure “cackling at the edges of the story.” I think for many of us the collision of reality and unreality is well summed up in Rene’s internal pondering here:

"How does one live amongst one’s fellow countrymen and countrywomen when you don’t know which of them is numbered against the sixty-million plus who brought the horror to power, when you can’t tell who should be counted among the ninety-million plus who shrugged and stayed home, or when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and that they hate all elites, …and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed, and the creature out of Spiritus Mundi rises up and slouches toward Washington, D.C., to be born."

The story Rene wants to forge into a movie is ultimately his own story. The novel asks if his character will develop past his challenges and barriers using lessons he can learn from the Goldens. His filmmaker lover lays out this scope of Rushie’s novel:
“You realize”, Suchitra said, “that this has become a movie about you, and all these Golden boys are aspects of your own nature. …All the characters are the <u>auteur</u>. It’s like Flaubert, Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”
“But I’m not an artist”, I said, “not sexually conflicted, not autistic, not a Russian gold digger, not a powerful old man in decline.”
“You’re carrying their questions with you wherever you go. The question of Apu’s life…Is it necessary to be profound or can you remain permanently on the surface? You need to answer this question also. D Golden, as his father also said, was all about ambiguity and pain. I feel it in you also, some ambiguity. I feel that you are in pain. As for Petya, he’s hemmed in by himself, he can’t escape his nature, though he much wants to be free. And maybe his games, the games he invents, are his freedom. That’s the place where he isn’t afraid. Maybe that’s the place you need to find. …And the old man …He is enfolded in tragedy, and so are you. He has lost sons, you lost parents. Your grief defines you and shuts you off from other people.
…I just see who you can be and I want you to see it too. Be profound. Own your tragedy. Find your freedom. Resolve your ambiguity, whatever it is.”

Throughout the book we are asked to consider whether a person can be both good and evil. Rene has to expand that debate over each of the Goldens to his own person. At one point he reaches the following dark state:
"…I learned the final lesson, the learning of which separates us from innocence. That there was no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were monsters we had always feared, and no matter what beauty enfolded us, no matter how lucky we were in life or money or family or talent or love, at the end of the road the fire was burning, and it would consume us all."

Pretty ponderous and portentious, right? But we want to love and trust this Rene. Maybe we find some way to proceed in a Trump world with the following lesson:
"The antic clothing of the absurd, the idea of the meaninglessness of life, was a more attractive philosophical garment to many of us than the tragedian’s somber robes, which, when worn, became both the evidence and the agents of doom. But it was also an aspect of human nature—just as powerful a characteristic of the contradictory human animal as its opposite—fatalistically to accept that there was indeed a natural order of things, and uncomplainingly to play the cards you were dealt."

Overall, I was richly rewarded by this read. I was thrilled by it lively pace and well pleased with the balance between playful satire and serious drama. One of my best reading experiences of the year.

This book was provided by the published for review through the Netgalley program.

I got an ARC from NetGalley and Random House a couple of months ago, for which I am very grateful, but I hadn't gotten around to being in the right mood to tackle a Salman Rushdie novel.

At about 400 pages, I would call The Golden House a sweeping tragedy, spanning the entirety of the Obama presidency as well as covering flashbacks from decades before. At the heart of the novel, which is possibly the most post-truth-y work of fiction currently on the market, is the self-styled Golden family. The patriarch, Nero, and his three sons, Petya, Apu, and D have recreated themselves upon their move to America. They arrive in 2008 in the great New York City, which allows them the anonymity that comes with big cities. Our guide into their mysterious lives is their new neighbor, a young man who we may call Rene.

"The family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontents."

Through Rene's eyes we discover the secrets that made this family run away from the city which they never name and the secrets that they continue to harbor and nurture even while in New York. But much like in real life, secrets have a way of finding their way to the surface. In this case, with tragic consequences.

The events, mostly, are self-brought by the patriarch, which makes for a much more compelling story and tragedy than if they were spurious. Trying to guess and discover the various mysteries kept me turning the pages.

At the center of the novel's themes is that of identity. What is identity? Is it narrowly defined? Do we need to define it? Is there just one identity? Can we make our own identity and if so, what is real? What is truth? These are all pertinent questions for our day and age, drawn very much from the current political climate. In a world of fake news, what is reality? As Rushdie writes: "The question is, can I lie better than the truth?"

Despite what other reviewers have said, I don't think Rushdie has an answer or is trying to push his particular opinion on us. His point is that identity is massive, and maybe we can't never know it completely. He writes as Rene's voice: "We are icebergs. I don't mean that we are cold, only that we are mostly under the surface, and the part of us that is hidden can sink the Titanic."

Some have complained about the heavy political slant of this book, but in this reviewer's humble opinion, fiction is supposed to be informed, inspired by reality. That is what makes fiction so compelling; that we can recognize ourselves, our world, our lives in the words of a fictional story.

Despite the devastating events in the book, one gets the sense that Rushdie is seeking to right wrongs, to create a story where the "bad" guys do get what they deserve in the end, even if relatively innocent bystanders are dragged into the mud too because this is a tragedy. "Look out, you will reap what you sow. You will reap what you sow."

Of course, this is a book of flawed people, the only characters worth reading about, and what was terrifying in reading about such imperfect, morally gray, people was what Rene expressed as a realization that "there was no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were the monsters we had always feared."

There's also some slight hope, both in the ending which I will not spoil, and in the writing. Things don't necessarily have to be the way they've always been, Rushdie seems to say. "It was the way of the world, I thought, and maybe it was, but the world is a bad place, you should look for a better world than the one we have made."

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The prose is beautiful, as you'd expect from an author as acclaimed as Salman Rushdie, the scope of the story is massive yet handled deftly, the plot and characters are compelling, and the story leaves you thinking long after you've finished reading.

I took a star off for pacing, the book could have perhaps been about 30 pages shorter which would have increased the sense of impending doom you get while reading the first part. It took a while setting the stage, introducing the characters, and that made the first part not as readable as the other two, but it was not that big of a problem.

There are many cultural references, both to pop culture and the classics, many of which might require extra research. I would have appreciated some footnotes for that so I didn't have to go into Google to look up a reference I felt I needed to fully grasp a paragraph, which took me out of the book for a moment and made for a less cohesive reading experience.

The juxtaposition of the political, and to a degree the social, unraveling of America with the downward spiral of the Golden family was beautifully done.

Thanks again to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC given to me in exchange for my honest review.

I give up! This book just wasn't meant for me. I appear to be in the minority as everyone seems to love it on Goodreads, but I couldn't get through it. I put it down about 5 or 6 times to pick it up later, thinking it was my frame of mind that was the problem. However, it's mentally exhausting. I was so tired of paying such close attention to everything said in order to figure out what was being told to me. There are so many metaphors to obscure people, places and things, run on sentences, overblown descriptions and pompous characters that never connected.

Nero Golden and his three sons (all with assumed Roman “hero” names) move from an unnamed country (quickly to be found out as India but the mystery remains as to why they so fiercely deny their homeland) into a Manhattan house (house, of course, meaning almost palace!) that is part of a small complex of homes in the Village. Each of them is brilliant and successful and part of the mystery of course is what drove them to this country. They are befriended and observed by their neighbor Rene, a young filmmaker who decides to use the Goldens for his next film (the comparisons to The Great Gatsby are inevitable with Rene as a willing Nick Carraway looking for his entry into this mesmerizing clan).

Rene is struggling with his own demons and is more vulnerable than he knows to the power and ostentatiously displayed wealth of the Goldens. He is drawn into their complicated family dynamics and, although he sees himself as using them is soon their pawn.

Rushdie casts his usual storytelling spell, although I found the first half of the novel more compelling than the second (more intensely plot driven) half. The book is as much about the U.S. culture in the Obama years as it is about the rise to power of Nero Golden and his complicated relationships with his adult sons, each very different from the others.

This is (unlike many of Rushdie’s works) a realistic novel: the magic lies in Rushdie’s brilliant writing and the spell he casts. I was left breathless at the power of the prose, almost as crystalline as poetry. And because of the characters and plot, it is as much a page-turner as the latest best seller. The portrayal of the lives of the wealthy and powerful as well as the world of art-the downtown scene of conceptual work, and the seemingly unstoppable power of the blockbuster movie, along with many other pop culture references was fascinating. I loved the story about Rene and his artist girlfriend as much as the story of the powerful Goldens. Each one powerfully attracts Rene (who is in danger of losing his soul) and draws him into their different world views.

The book addresses the issue of how we decide who we are-as well as how much power we actually have to make that decision and how much is decided for us. There are villains, although not so many heroes, mostly men who are swayed by the rich and powerful and led in ways they would never have chosen on their own. As Nero’s past comes back to haunt him, the novel becomes more lurid, with many bodies strewn along the way.

I found the book breathtaking but ultimately less deep than Rushdie’s other works. However, the ride with the Goldens and the portrait of American life under Obama, as well as the mesmerizing villain (who appeals to the evil in others) was often exhilarating and fascinating.

As always, even a flawed Rushdie is well worth reading.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Salman Rushdie, and Random House Publishing for the free copy of this novel. It was well worth the time (it’s a long novel of more than 300 pages) I invested in its reading.

The Golden House needed a more aggressive editor. Rambling, and pretentious, saved at the end by a few wonderful turns of phrase.

Bombastic, overstuffed, kitchen sink of a novel. In a word, uneven. There are moments of brilliance and moments of tedium.

Peppered liberally (VERY liberally) with references to film, art, music, mythology and literature ranging from the ancient world to pop culture, The Golden House will be a feast for some readers, exhausting for others.

For me, this book is at its best when at its most fanciful, incorporating myths and snippets from epic tales into the narrative. I also enjoyed Nero's nefarious backstory, when finally divulged, but it comes late in the novel and is by necessity, quite rushed.

The story takes place from 2008 to 2016 and touches on (very briefly) some of the most topical issues and events of the decade, including:
- Occupy Wall Street
- Gender identity politics
- Gamer gate
These were and are issues of utmost concern to the people involved with them but Rushdie here presents them merely as curiosities recounted by a disinterested outsider. They become a bit lifeless, like he's describing specimens under glass rather than the living beast. With so much crammed in to one book I guess there just wasn't room to do justice to all of it.

Then there's the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, which serves as not much more than colourful set dressing. This garish backdrop is far more interesting than the Gatsby-ish story playing out in the foreground.

Passages of the book are astute, even incisive, in particular the soliloquies on our polarised, post-factual, digital age. But these observations didn't provoke in me much of a reaction beyond "hmm, yes, that's very well observed". It's all about our current moment, a moment which is so fraught, yet the words feel sort of bloodless. Where's the sting in this tale?

This is sounding like a very critical review, but I don't really mean it that way. I really did enjoy the book. But I also felt the ghost of something better in the pages and so my expectations ran high. Really good elements mixing with some disappointment to average out at three stars.