Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Salman RushdieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-05
ISBN: 0099578514
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Vintage Books
Book Reviews of Midnight's Children
Book Review: A Stream of (Enlightended) Consciousness
Summary: 5 Stars
Much has been written about the unique writing style of Salman Rushdie and Midnight's Children. It is hip to like it and thus call oneself a literary, and not unusual to dislike it as an uninitiated reader who cannot possibly know what to expect a priori. For what it's worth, here is my attempt to characterize the style. The book is written as a "stream of consciousness", long long long sentences, side-by-side repetition of adjectives for emphasis (hint hint hint!), use of synonyms similes parellels without punctuation or separators (again for emphasis), revealing the plot's end-game in advance yet (or thus) engaging the reader in the path to getting there, repeated summaries each to make an overarching point than to simply recollect the story so far, admitted insecurity and intermittent defense of the story's believability, and did I mention rechristening of events and characters with metaphoric names. If you could read and follow the last sentence in one shot, you are ready to read and enjoy Midnight's Children. The story-telling is hallucinatory on the surface, but enlightened underneath; deliriously exaggerated on the surface, but scrupulously balanced underneath; grossly fatalistic on the surface, but hopelessly optimistic underneath; carelessly raw on the surface, but meticulous genius underneath.
Never judge a book by its cover, judge it by its metaphors. Besides being one intense allegory, the book is a collection of the richest metaphors I've ever read in a piece of literature. Metaphors, mind you, and not its evil cousin, Analogies. Every event and character is first rechristened with its metaphoric name. In the process of writing the book, Rushdie has created a new vocabulary of words that become the best way (if not the only way) to describe those characters and events.
Spoiler alert: To pick from this new vocabulary, one way of characterizing the life of Saleem Sinai, and therefore the book, is Sperectomy: the draining-out of hope. To quote the last sentence of the book that sums it up "...because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."
Midnight's Children is a great way to live vicariously through post-colonial India. If A Fine Balance is a bus-ride through India with a good commentator, Midnight's Children is your dark roller-coaster with ghosts popping out at you at every turn. If A Fine Balance is real in a touchy-and-feely way that you wish it was unreal, Midnight's Children is unreal in a mystical way that you will hate to, and yet force yourself to believe it is real; just like a post-traumatic nightmare, only it was a re-enactment.
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