By far one of the best novel that Rushdie wrote recently and one of the best stories I read this year, comparable only to 4321 by Paul Auster. The epic story of the Golden family told by a neighbor, director and screenplay writer wannabee, that since from the start gets involved in this Indian's family affairs, very obscure affairs: love, death and everything in between for the tale of the rise and the fall of a legendary man who decided to call himself Nero.

Uno dei migliori romanzi di Rushdie e sicuramente una delle storie migliori lette ultimamente, paragonabile soltanto al 4321 di Paul Auster. L'epica storia della famiglia Golden, immigrata dall'India, raccontata dal loro vicino di casa, scrittore di copioni e regista in erba, che perde da subito la sua imparzialitá, per venire condotto sempre piú a fondo nelle drammatiche vicende familiari, oscure e perverse. L'amore, la morte e tutto quello che sta nel mezzo per raccontare l'ascesa e la caduta di un uomo che aveva scelto di chiamarsi Nerone

This is the tale of an immigrant family, the Goldens, who come to America in 2008 and buy a mansion in a gated community of Art Deco homes. The backyards of the homes of the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District form a park-like setting--"a private, magic little place in the middle of downtown NY."

They arrive in the city just as President Obama is being inaugurated, which ushers in a period of hope for the country. The head of the family calls himself Nero Julius Golden and his three adult sons are Petronius, Apuleius, and Dionysus--obviously adopted names. Where have they come from and what is their history? How had they become so wealthy? And what has happened to their mother? These are all mysteries to be debated by the curious neighbors.

One such neighbor, Rene Unterlinden, a young would-be auteur, is the story's narrator. He decides to do a film about the family and, during the next ten years, befriends them, observes them and plans the scenes he will use for his debut work he will call The Golden House.

Things begin to fall apart for the family, as each son has a fatal flaw and the father's sins begin to catch up with him. Is this karma at work? Kismet? Fate? In that way, this story is a morality tale. And Rushdie pictures America's future falling apart too as a new 'king' is elected--a clown he refers to as 'the Joker.'

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for allowing me access to an arc of Rushdie's latest book. So thrilled to be given the opportunity!

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. Despite having multiple Salman Rushdie titles on my to-read list, this is the first of his books that I've read. I really enjoyed it although it was such a dark story. Along the lines of a Greek tragedy for sure. The writing kept the suspense up all throughout. You know from the very start that bad things are going to happen but the plotting was so good, I generally couldn't figure out what it was in advance. Add to that the wonderful political commentary and it was a winner for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. I've been really wanting to read a Salman Rushdie book for ages. I've read snippets before and always liked his style of writing. This book did not disappoint although it did take me a little while to get into it. The book reminded me a little of The Great Gatsby in that the narrator is barely the main character. We do get some of his story but the rest of the story is mired in his observing the trials and tribulations of his ultra rich neighbors the Goldens who mysteriously appeared in his neighborhood the year that Obama was elected. Great Shakespearean-type tragedy.

Honestly, I requested this book on the author's name alone, without reading any detail from the synopsis, so pronounced is the good name of this writer. It seems I was rewarded for doing so.

This is a fascinatingly complex novel, rich in description and comprised of multiple layers of interest. The reader is provided with a textured and sensational insight to the Gold family and their larger social circle, who provide an honest (and sometimes scathing) vision of the contemporary political climate. Every single sentence had a wisdom to impart to the reader and spoke of truths that made this both shocking controversial and a sharply witty satire of our present. Clever, clever writing!

The plot evolves around the Golden Family who relocate from India to affluent Manhatten in mysterious, possibly criminal circumstances. Their story is told through the eyes of their neighbour, an aspiring movie maker.
This is my first Rushdie book and did not know what to expect. Unfortunately I did not finish this book, a rarity for me.
I struggled through the first third of the book. I found it quite dull and dry despite the host of cultural references contained. Perhaps this was the issue. Pages tended to drift by when sentences would have sufficed. The plethora of references just appeared to be a device to show the reader how clever the author was when all it did for me was to stop the story from flowing. Maybe it's just me and I'm not a Rushdie man.
I may return to the novel ,the character of Nero Golden was intriguing I'd like to know how he develops.
For me, all a bit of a slog and a bit self indulgent. 2.5 stars.
I received this an ARC from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Interesting book. I've never read his works before, so I didn't know what to expect.

I simply don't have enough body of reference or knowledge to understand this book, and so I cannot finish enough of it to provide a review.

The Golden House is told through the lens of Rene, an aspiring screenwriter. He follows the lives of Golden men. The patriarch of the family Nero and his sons Petya, Apu, and D all of whom chose their names and new identities upon emigrating to the US. Rene sees in his new neighbors, a story that needs to be told. He ingratiates himself into their lives. He becomes a friend and confidant to the brothers and a surrogate son to the father. He witness the rise and fall of each member of the family and eventually, unintentionally helps to contribute to the fall of Nero. Along the way he also discovers who he really is.

This is the first offering I have read from Rushdie. Obviously I didn't know what I was in for. You really need to pay attention when reading this book. The sentences are long but packed full of information. There were a couple times where I had to re-read what I had just finished. I sometimes felt the author got a little long winded as well. To me it was kind of like running a marathon to finish this book. I started out hopeful, had to really persevere in the middle, and was happy to reach the finish line. This does not mean I didn't enjoy it, it was a good read, I'm just not feeling it as much as others seem to. Perhaps I need to give Rushdie another try. I would still recommend others to pick this up and give it a try. Especially if you are already a Rushdie fan. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me an ARC for review.

<b> "The Golden House" is absolutely golden- rich in characters, plot and intrigue! A break out hit for 2017 for sure! </B>

Salman Rushdie weaves an engaging tale of the Golden family. I am in awe at how he pulls you in with pieces of information about the family while keeping in line with the American Political climate of that time. Rushdie walked a very thin line of keep the story on track while letting the readers know about the political landscape but he does it in the most engaging and thought provoking way.

The Golden family- Father and three sons shows up to the Garden community on the night Obama is inaugurated. No one knows anything about this family and the community is raging with speculation. The story is told from the next door neighbor's perspective- who happens to be a film maker- needless to say, the narration draws you in.

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I read a book as enchanting as this. While the first 10% is as slow and painstaking as can be, the other 90% really picks up paces and grabs you. I have to so, I could not stop laughing at Rushdie's reference to "transbillionaire and identify as rich" that bit had be dying of laughter.

The most delicious read! I totally recommend this. (Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!)

Ah, this book is fantastic! :D I mean, it's Rushdie, who's surprised, but I do think this is by far the book of his I've loved the most.

The Golden family – Nero, the patriarch, and his three adult sons, Petronius (aka Petya), Lucius Apuleius (aka Apu), and Dionysus (aka D) – are newcomers to The Gardens, a small self-contained neighborhood in New York City, like a child's dreamy ideal of pre-hipster Greenwich Village. Their names, by the way, are all fake; the family is fleeing undisclosed trauma in an unnamed country (it's obviously India, but you have to get fairly deep into the book for that to be made explicit). Each adjusts, or doesn't, to their new life in America with varying degrees of success. Petya attempts to move past his severe autism and alcoholism, Apu makes a name as a celebrity artist, and D struggles to figure out his (or her) gender identity. Nero joins the construction industry, blasts his name across buildings, and acquires a Slavic trophy wife, but it's not quite fair to call him a Trump analogue; for one thing, Nero's far too smart and self-aware, not to mention capable of regret. In fact Trump himself is occasionally mentioned in the background, though he's always referred to as 'The Joker':
To step outside that enchanted—and now tragic—cocoon was to discover that America had left reality behind and entered the comic-book universe; D.C., Suchitra said, was under attack by DC. It was the year of the Joker in Gotham and beyond. The Caped Crusader was nowhere to be seen—it was not an age of heroes—but his archrival in the purple frock coat and striped pantaloons was ubiquitous, clearly delighted to have the stage to himself and hogging the limelight with evident delight. He had seen off the Suicide Squad, his feeble competition, but he permitted a few of his inferiors to think of themselves as future members of a Joker administration. The Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face and Poison Ivy lined up behind the Joker in packed arenas, swaying like doo-wop backing singers while their leader spoke of the unrivaled beauty of white skin and red lips to adoring audiences wearing green fright wigs and chanting in unison, Ha! Ha! Ha!

All of this is narrated by René, a young man also living in the safety of The Gardens, a filmmaker with dreams of making a documentary about the Goldens, or perhaps just a movie starring a fictionalized version of them. René openly admits that he will combine characters or change details to fit his idea of how the story should go, which means it's always open to interpretation how much of what he's telling us is the truth.

It's a book that is bursting at the seams with stuff of all sorts: Greek myth, Roman history, Russian folklore, American politics, philosophy and melodrama, an enormous number of characters each of whom gets their own backstory, motivation, and secret thoughts, subplots and sub-subplots, dramatic revelations from the past that reappear unexpectedly, murders and fires, equal allusions to Kipling and mafia movies and the I ching, and even a secret baby. The writing is gorgeous, of course, and there's plenty to make you think, but what I was most surprised about was simply how compelling it was. I never wanted to put this book down, because I was so thrillingly engaged to find out what happened next. Just a really, really amazing book. I already want to reread it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2049629395

Salmon Rushdie new novel, <b>The Golden House</b> is a story about family, culture, and love. A wealthy man from Mumbai suddenly leaves India with his three sons and settles into an enclave of townhouses in Greenwich Village, NY. Nero Golden has adopted a new name for himself and his family, hoping, it seems, to escape his past in Mumbai. The townhouses where the Goldens live open to a beautiful communal garden shared with the residences of the quadrangle on Sullivan and Houston.<br><br>Rene, the son of a couple who lives in the townhouses, narrates the story. Rene's parents are both professors and Rene has only known the gardens, living there all his life. Rene is a film student and aspiring film maker, a believer in the auteur theory of cinema. He becomes friends with the sons of Nero Golden and tells their story and ours too. The time is 2008, and everyone in Rene's world is happy with Barack Obama, the new president. Hope is in the air. It seems that the Goldens are safe in their new home. Rene is innocent as are the three Golden boys. The story will unravel all hope and happiness for many.<br><br> To fully appreciate SR's novel, it will be helpful to know the great filmmakers. Much attention centers on the meaning of famous films and the connection with mythology. The 'Joker' (cue DJ Trump, Jr.) enters the picture on the periphery early, and we have him with us throughout the saga of the Goldens and Rene. Rushdie encapsulates absolutely everything happening in the USA from the beginning of the signs that Trump would run for president and even manages to include white supremacy, a foreshadowing of all we are living with now. No one can deny SR's genius and innate ability to gauge the temperature of civilization, either in the USA or India. It is a heartbreaking story from all sides, but we are given some small glimmer of hope from the author and must go on living our lives, as they are today.<br><br> Thank you to NetGalley, Salman Rushdie, and Random House for the opportunity to read this ARC.

The Golden House focuses on the Golden family made of three sons and their father. Because of his criminal doings,they flee their native country and reestablish in Manhattan. With new names and a fresh start, they ultimately rise and fall. The story is told by a neighbor in New York, a want-to-be filmmaker.

The first third of the book was a slog. I stopped and planned to go back and give it a second try. Four tries later and just past the halfway point, I concede. This is just not for me. It is heavy handed, dry and lacks something of the style I usually enjoy with Rushdie. The only parts that stuck with me were when he made clear commentary on the current political and social climate in the US. More of these small glimpses of perfection would have kept me reading.

It is complex and not an easy read.
Current affairs seem to be running through the story in a thoughtful way.
That said, I'm not sure I understand it.
It has left me deep in thought and that's always a good thing to find in a novel.

I really wanted to like this but - in the end the thick and meandering language caused me to put it down without finishing it.

I couldn't finish this pretentious, confusing book that had no direction that I could discern. I tried valiantly to finsish this book but my time was better spent elsewhere. I think Rushdie is an author who writes for himself and just expects readers to fall into line but this book was an unnecessary slog that Im sure will tons of awards because liking Salman Rushdie is what is to be expected by people giving awards.

Salman Rushdie’s 13th novel, The Golden House, plays out as a Shakespearean drama re-imagined in the eyes of a postmodernist and set in the Obama era of ultra-richeManhattan. (There, how’s that for an elevator pitch?) This novel is full of nostalgic references, ornate erudite descriptions and high-brow prose, as you would expect from the man who brought us Midnight’s Children and holds an esteemed Booker Prize. I, myself was first introduced to Salman Rushdie by Hanif Kureishi, who wrote one of my favorite college reads, The Black Album, in response to the fatwah issued by Islamic fundamentalists intent on killing Salman Rushdie for writing his 4th novel, The Satanic Verses. So, you can imagine the anticipation I felt to finally meet this great novelist and essayist up close and in person for myself—or as up close and in person as one’s words on a page will allow us to get to the true author themselves.

And here you have it. Sit back and imagine this:

The Golden House trots along the Obama era years, from his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, up to the election that gave us our 45th president. This political period is the mirror against which these characters see their lives unfolding, crumbling and transforming. Nero Golden and his household of three sons, of which he is the godlike patriarch, are expatriates of an unnamed country (which is eventually named) after a terrorist tragedy takes the life of their matriarch and shady financial deals finish them off in their homeland, sending the family to New York to rebuild their lives with the help of their obscene and conspicuous wealth by way of the American Dream. They move into a mega-mansion in an affluent neighborhood in Manhattan, where all 22 homes of the community back into a luxurious garden oasis that the families all collectively enjoy. It is in this near-utopian communal setting where lives begin to cross and our narrator, René, is met by the leading family. We follow him on his journey to infiltrate, observe and ultimately document the Golden lives in a film he’s been longing to make but isn’t really sure of how to go about doing. Along the way, characters come and go. As the modern-day “Julio-Claudian” drama unfolds, death occurs. Birth occurs. Marriage occurs. The saga of their lives unfolds, shatters, melts down and repairs—never in that order.

If you’re looking for a single word to describe this novel, a good starting place would be dense though I cannot argue that it is unnecessarily so, and the read certainly wouldn’t have been the same without this aspect. Literary allusions—call me Ishmael— abound on every page here and, quite honestly, you might want to have a digital encyclopedia on hand for quick reference through some of these passages— Chinese hexagrams of divination, for example? But I loved that, reveled in it for the most part, in fact, because this enlightened display of narrative talent played with so many forms of storytelling, from conventional narrative formatting to scenes written as screenplays, from the use of quotations marks to the use of not-a-one, and back again. It was a journey, but at least it was a ride too, crossing the lines of contemporary fiction, postmodernism and metafiction.

Here you’ll find wry social commentary that crackles and pops with dry irony, heaped on in healthy doses so that no culture—past or present, Eastern or Western—is safe from the scrutinizing eye—though, with the backdrop of this novel being set specifically against the Obama era, much of the commentary hits hard on American culture, smashing up against it forcefully and knocking down our perception of it, knocking down the barriers around talking about it, from Black Lives Matter to the collapse of the housing market to transgender transformation and everywhere in between:

“Once upon a time…if a boy liked pink and dolls his parents would be afraid he was homosexual and try to interest him in boy stuff…they might have doubts about his orientation but it wouldn’t occur to them to question his gender. Now it seems you go to the other extreme. Instead of saying the kid’s a pansy you start trying to persuade him he’s a girl.”

“What is American culture?” This novel dares to seriously ask—often pokes fun at—and ultimately explores—no, turns inside out—this beloved cliché we and the world over cling to called the American Dream, from the viewpoint of the transplant, from the viewpoint of those ultimately in search of themselves in the whirlwind that is our lives in our culture today.

“…I could feel it, the anger of the unjustly dead, the young men shot for walking in a stairwell while black, the young child shot for playing with a plastic gun in a playground while black, all the daily black death of America, screaming out that they deserved to live, and I could feel, too, the fury of white America at having to put up with a black man in white house, and the frothing hatred of the homophobes…the blue-collar anger of everyone who had been Fannie Mae’d and Freddie Mac’d by the housing calamity, all the discontent of a furiously divided country, everyone believing they were right…”

Rushdie’s insightful narrative is at times chilling it its acute accuracy about our cultural climate and our 45th president—“…the Joker shrieked…in that bubble…gun murderers were exercising their constitutional rights but the parents of murdered children were un-American…mass deportations would be a good thing; and women reporters would be seen to be unreliable because they had blood coming out of their whatevers…”— and made The Golden House a complete package, which managed to be both entertaining and at times mildly surreal, with the help of a wink toward a more avant-garde formatting technique and a nod toward the “magically real.”

I navigated this novel with the sense of one at their grandfather’s knee, he with brandy and cigar in hand, hearing a tale that was often fascinating in its baroqueness. The Golden House is chocked full of so many things we love in reads—solid plotting, whimsy and intellectual stimuli—which made the ornate density of this novel worth persevering through in the end—and that both stirred and excited my reader soul, like a hearty helping of literary gumbo you have to close your eyes and smile to enjoy, adding depth to the layers of the pages, of these words. And, that was easily enough for 4.5 stars. ****

This was a book that I really enjoyed and looked forward to getting back to every time I had to stop reading for a bit (you know those horrible moments when real life interferes with being able to read 24/7?). The story centers on a family of immigrants in New York, their mysterious past (exactly how did they make all that money?) and the relationships they forge in their new homeland.

The book is narrated by a friend of the family who is somewhat of an outsider to the very wealthy circles that Nero navigates, but the narrator is also a film maker who is in search of a story. Nero Golden and his family are the perfect subject for a documentary, and so the narrator begins working on this task but quickly becomes part of the sub plot within his own narrative.

The most intriguing aspect of this book for me was how Rushdie tackles of topics that are headlining our nightly news. Fiction is often the lens through which we see the world around us most clearly, and Rushdie does this adroitly. This was a great read.

Salman Rushdie is one of the greatest living writers in the world and few authors have his standing, not just as an author, but as a symbol of the vital importance of art and authorship. Perhaps because of his stature, he seems to feel obligated to tackle the big questions of society in many of his books. The Golden House is no different. Looking at the meaning of truth, identity, its reinvention, and family in the New York of Obama and Trump, this is another wide-ranging, all-encompassing novel.

The story is narrated by René, the son of Belgian academics who moved to New York, teach, and live in a house that backs up to a communal garden made by opening all the back yards into one shared space, a private park for the privileged few who live there. On the day Obama won the election, a family of mysterious origin, a father with three sons who have immigrated to America with great wealth and new names taken from the Roman emperors move into the grandest house in the garden. Their surname is Golden.

René wants to be a filmmaker and thinks this family is the stuff of cinema. He befriends them and is often at their home, even going on vacation with them to Florida. He learns their secrets. Their story is the stuff of Greek tragedy as their losses mount up and the father is ensnared by a Russian gold digger of mythological proportions.

The Goldens are a tragic family and as we learn their secrets, none of them are terribly surprising. There’s a lot of unnecessary obscurities. The secret country of origin, the terror attack that killed Nero Golden’s wife. They are real events so the elaborate not-naming of the country and the attack seems a waste of words. Even the grand reveal near the end is not a surprise as it’s been foreshadowed several times and anyone paying attention will have figured out the broad outline without the specifics.

I confess I am was disappointed in The Golden House. I expected it to become one of my favorite books of the year like Shalimar, the Clown or Midnight’s Children. Instead, I frequently found myself checking my progress, like a child in the back seat asking “Are we there yet?” I wanted the book to be over. It’s not that I wanted to quit unfinished, I just wanted to be done. I wanted to find out what happened, but it was such a chore to wade through it all. René could not seem to describe an event without dredging up every book and film that had some comparable or contrasting scene to compare with it. This could go on for pages and, too often, it did.

Through it all, there is this running commentary about society, some of it very curmudgeonly. As though René were a querulous old man shaking his cane and snarling about “Kids nowadays.” It sounds so odd as he is a youthful filmmaker. It seems as though René fades and Rushdie speaks through him because he often sounds like a grumpy, old fart.

The middle son is questioning his identity and his place on the gender spectrum. While the idea that people must not always be assigned a label is a liberating one, there seemed to be this grudge in Rushdie’s writing about the trans community and genderqueer activism. D sees a therapist who is a bad caricature of a dogmatic ideological enforcer culled from twitter rants. There’s a contemptible joke about a transbillionaire that gets trotted out twice.

On the other hand, his raging indictment of our national aversion to education, facts, news, truth, and integrity made my blood sing. If you love rants condemning the stupidity, the racism, the anti-Americanism of the people who voted for the Joker, as Donald Trump is called in the book, you will love that part. I sure did.

Don’t get me wrong, a disappointing Rushdie book is still better than the average book by a mile. I still think Rushdie is a great writer whose prose can have the rushing, headlong power of a raging river. He creates characters who are unique and intriguing and stories that are complex. He has important ideas to write about and interesting stories to tell. But he gets in his own way.

I can’t tell you how many times I was reading another never-ending list of literary and cinematic allusions while wondering if it would ever end. Some went on for pages. I read just one example to a friend, a short one at that, where René runs through a list of first names of directors and before I got to the end, my friend said “Stop! Stop! I can’t take it.” It was torturous. But why? Why is so much of the book flooded with literary listicles?

Rushdie rages against the anti-elitism that poisons America, that made so many of us so stupid as to vote for the Joker when we knew he was corrupt, racist, and rapacious. Is he shoving his cultural literacy in our faces to remind us that the elite are elite because they know things? I don’t think the people who despise intellect and expertise are likely to pick up Rushdie’s books in the first place. I don’t think Rushdie’s readers need a reminder that he is culturally literate. Familiarity with his work is part of being culturally literate, so what’s the point?

It feels like blasphemy to not like Rushdie’s book – especially since I have loved his others so much. It took me nearly ten days to read The Golden House because I constantly had to take a break, not to stop and think about the story, but because I was frustrated by the artifice of the unnamed country and the tedium of the constant cultural references. I wish I had liked it more. Instead, with such disappointment, I feel downright curmudgeonly.

The Golden House will be released September 5th. I received an e-galley in advance from the publisher through NetGalley.