Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
My rating: 5 out of 5
Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House was one of those treats where I started the book without knowing a thing about it. Immediately you know you’re in the safe hands of a storyteller, not just a plotter or a writer, but a craftsman who knows his story-telling trade. The story twists at the start while the characters settle down and the narrator (a neighbour to the Golden’s) is established, and then it jumps into a full blown inspection of identity. His suite of characters tackle all the main issues – loyalty (whether to the family or your nation), gender politics, political leaning, mental health, and so on, all addressed like a debate where different views are expressed (my favourite was the trans-billionaire opponent).
I’d be interested to know the genealogy of this parable since I suspect there’s a story in there too, maybe a frustration with recent elections. For example, towards the end of the book, Rushdie vents – “when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and they hate elites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge, not that knowledge-is-power nonsense but knowledge is beauty, and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed.”
I tend to review books as it helps the author – they get feedback, gain social media exposure, and hopefully as a result, gather more sales. I think Salmon Rushdie may have enough presence already that my little voice isn’t going to make a difference! Still, this review is my way of saying thanks, for an intelligent, remarkable book, that is going to set the benchmark for all future books that I read.